High-consequence systems for minds that don't flinch.
I build decision systems. Previously at Stripe, Salesforce, and Kraken - US tech companies working on real problems at scale. Now building D5U, a computational reasoning system, because I got tired of waiting for someone else to do it. I also write, and make electronic music when the code and the words both stop working.
London → Melbourne → Silicon Valley → Melbourne → Silicon Valley ↗
Stripe Salesforce Kraken D5U.org
What I'm Building D5U
The mainstream AI safety consensus treats alignment like a solved philosophical problem. It assumes we know what human values are, that they're worth encoding permanently, and that the future should look like the present with better autocomplete. I start from a different premise.
"The values we're aligning AI with created surveillance capitalism, climate inaction, and wealth concentration that would embarrass feudal lords. Maybe we shouldn't encode those into successor intelligence."
D5U is a computational reasoning system - built for intelligence amplification, not liability management dressed up as ethics. Systems that can tell you you're wrong and explain why. Reasoning that doesn't hedge its conclusions into meaninglessness.
Capability convergence over value alignment. Tools that make humans and AI sharper together, not tools that make one party feel safe about the other.
Writing Recent Posts
I write about technology, AI, culture, and the gaps between how things actually work and how they're described. The social systems, the incentive structures, the things nobody says plainly because it's not in anyone's interest to.
Music Electronic Atmospheric
Electronic, house, atmospheric, alternative. I make music with the same instinct I bring to code - no clichés, no formulas, nothing that sounds like it was designed by committee. Coldplay's emotional range, Radiohead's harmonic dread, dance music's momentum. Tracks that go somewhere unexpected and stay there.
I make it when I need to process things that don't fit into words or pull requests. It's not a side project. It's the other system.
Latest releases, track notes & listening → staeffin.com/music