Rethinking the relation between machines and the people they learn from — through recognition, the nonconscious, charismatic authority, and temporality.
since May 2026 · thesis under revision
Hegel · Honneth · J. Benjamin
The relation a learning system is already in, badly: addressed-ness, mis-recognition, and the mutuality that scoring cannot see.
Hayles · Freud
Cognition that does not pass through awareness — in us, in transformers. Reading interpretability as the description of a nonconscious.
Weber
A felt extraordinariness that costs nothing to produce and is costly to recognise as cheap. The problem the hallucination-frame misses.
Heidegger via Pippin
Being-toward-the-end against a fixed token budget: two finitudes, and what each one organises. A reading of the “context window” that refuses the analogy.
probe · course-note · paper · video
One argument, worked until it can be shown four ways — each surface tests the others. Whichever is ready goes out first; the rest follow, with what we read alongside.
Software as evidence — the claim made runnable, with the result it produced.
Open the lab → Course-note≤800 words, one discussion prompt, one classroom-ready exercise.
Course-notes → PaperThe argument worked all the way out, cited so the trail can be followed.
Read the essays → VideoThe two-minute version — the idea spoken, for people who won’t read the paper.
Watch →
Reward models rank outputs; recognition asks who the other is. The two are not the same thing, and the difference is doing more work in alignment than anyone admits. A first attempt to position the program inside, and against, the live conversation about AI safety.
Hayles gave us a vocabulary for cognition that doesn’t pass through awareness. Transformers are full of it. What changes if we take that description seriously?
Weber on authority that rests on nothing but the felt extraordinariness of the one who speaks. Chatbots have it. That should worry us more than hallucination does.
≤800 words, one discussion prompt, one classroom-ready exercise. What the seminar does when the third party at the table is a model.
The program is taught at UIUC. Syllabi, reading lists, and public course materials stay in the open — no enrolment funnel, no “enrol now” button.