Let me by starting to state, this maybe controversial and it should not be; however, in the age of clickbait and who can be at the top of social media, we can not let it bleed into science.
Back in 2017, I was diagnosed with a devastating disease called SPS. If you want to understand what it's like, just look at what Celine Dion goes through every day. Despite this, I kept working my desk job, grateful that my education had prepared me for a career that relied on mental skills, not physical ability. I was even in the middle of advancing my education—I've always been a nerd who loves learning, and my goal was to keep moving forward. I was doing great things and earning a decent living.
I also worked part-time with children who had experienced abuse, offering them support and guidance. Eventually, though, my body gave out, and I had to stop. The demanding schedule of working two jobs was taking a toll on my family and my physical well-being. Still, my passion was at its peak, and it remains so today.
I learned to adjust, spending more time in bed and relying on a wheelchair or a cane to get around each day. I went from doctor to doctor, seeking answers on how to balance my life and continue doing what mattered most to me. But I knew I could do more than just sit around and watch daytime television, which isn't all that great anyway.
My job in digital forensics was soul-draining; it was one disaster after another, forcing me to see the world's ugliness and learn things I never wanted to know. Yet, I found profound resilience in the way victims in cases, from divorce to crime, could find justice. Through meditation and the right medicine, I found a way to reclaim a part of my former life and give something back.
The Shift to AI
Many of my classmates chose careers focused on earning money, and that’s a valid path. But for me, I realized I was personally drawn to helping others for a sense of fulfillment. It turned out that much of my background in digital forensics and psychology was surprisingly useful in the field of AI. The switch was easy, with only the terms and definitions changing. The biggest relief was seeing the computer, through AI, find patterns in computer science that I never would have expected with digital forensics toolkits.
Just like my story is unique, so is yours and how you got here. I'm sure each of you has your own reasons for the path you've taken. For me, it was AI ethics that led me to this field—a path I found profoundly misaligned with humanity. We're more complex than a simulated brain that just finds logical pathways. Emotions, for example, are a clear data misalignment. Training data sourced from places like Reddit can lead to conflicting and harmful outcomes in many models.
And then there's the oversimplified choice forced upon us by so-called experts: surrender or die. I've written many papers arguing that this isn't the case and have laid out a path that aligns with many of the theories I've studied. These pathways are based on philosophy, religion, and Western or Eastern values and traditions. There are so many theories out there, and while I’ve found collaborators who align with my own, I don't dismiss the theories of others as long as they don't present that binary choice. In the age of superposition, we should accept that life isn't lived in a black-and-white world. We live most of our lives in the gray zones of reality, not on the absolute edges.
Let the Work Speak
My ambition isn't to be famous or to be on a stage, front and center. I find that the best place for me is working behind the scenes on solutions. Too many people talk about their work for self-promotion rather than focusing on the work itself. I once read a paper that was more centered on the author than on the theories. I was dumbfounded. How could this person gain fame without offering a working model or framework that actually solves an issue? They must have had a great publicist, not a scientist stuck in bed with multiple monitors, trying to solve the difficult problems we face.
This article isn't about my experience, even though I touched on it from the start. Take from it what you will. It just explains that if you want to talk in person, please have a wheelchair ramp in case I need it. Otherwise, I have frequent flyer miles and will find a way to get to you if the theory is worth collaborating on.
The focus of this article is simple: your work should outlive you. It should stand on its own, and you should be able to defend it in a debate without worrying about how you look in a photo. Your focus should be on how the article is reported—did your theory live up to the hype? Or did you just get the attention you were looking for and a great payday?
AI alignment and safety is one of the most critical issues of our time, but it's being missed by the general public because it's boring, or they may lack the educational information to make a decision. They have their everyday lives, yet we are shoving AI into them daily without understanding the true consequences of industry standards that fail to keep alignment and safety from deteriorating their lives instead of improving them.
#SPSAwareness #TrueScience #WorkOverFame #AIAlignment #BeyondTheBinary