Why Epistemic Technology?

Over the coming decades, I expect artificial intelligence to revolutionize our work and lives. For those like me, working in software development or knowledge-based fields, it is already beginning to do so. How will our work and lives change? I don’t know and I don’t think anyone knows. But I want to do my utmost to be in a position where I can adapt to those changes, and make a positive impact on the world. Epistemic Technology is my attempt to do that.

For the last several months I have been trying to figure out what the next stage of my career should be. I talked to friends, family, co-workers, and others, many of whom I had never met and who had no idea who I was. They were universally generous and tolerant of a clueless semi-academic and I am grateful to them all.

Epistemic Technology is where I have landed after all those conversations. This post is about why I think this is the right next step (not the final step!) for me. It is also about why I think the sort of thing I am doing might, generally, be a good idea.

So what is Epistemic Technology? At its core, it is an AI consulting company. Its mission is to help people think about and work with AI technologies. When I started considering a change, this is not where I expected to end up. I thought that what I wanted to do was build a software development company focused on the education and research sector, and specifically open scholarship. When I joined the Humanities Commons project in 2021, it was because I wanted to build technologies that could help improve academic research. Originally when I started thinking about a change, it was because I thought I might be able to better accomplish that same goal working independently. I have long had ideas for academically-oriented technologies that I think could both improve the lives of researchers and improve the overall quality of academic research. I wanted to take my shot at building those.

I am still interested in building technologies that can help improve academic research. But the rapid developments in the field over the last few years have convinced that my central focus needs to be understanding and developing AI-focused technologies.

What does software development look like five or ten years from now? What does knowledge work look like? What are our daily lives like? I have increasingly come to believe that AI must be at the core of how I—or anyone—is thinking about the future. From that perspective, how could I not start an AI-focused endeavor? Anything else seems simply wrong.

Why a consultancy rather than a software development company or a non-profit or something else entirely? Primarily, a consultancy is the best way I can think of to justify investing time in gaining a broad and deep understanding of AI technologies. It also allows me to take an experimental, small-project focused approach to my work. Finally, I am hoping that it will give me the space to write about what I’m learning, as—hopefully—producing useful content for others will be one of the best ways to attract potential clients.

For now, Epistemic Technology is a for-profit enterprise—a solely-owned LLC. In the future it may make sense to grow as a for-profit benefit corporation or to form a non-profit. An LLC is simply the easiest structure to set up and get running while I figure all this out.

Even as a for-profit solo consultancy, though, I think there is room for me to have a positive social impact. My goal is to help businesses and other organizations take a thoughtful approach to AI. There is a bewildering array of AI-based technologies emerging every day now, and part of my role is just to help people navigate that complexity and understand how it might impact their work. But it is also to help organizations think through ethical issues such as gender and racial bias, user privacy, environmental impact, and intellectual property rights. By helping others to make informed decisions that take these ethical factors into account, I hope to play a role, however small, in making everyone’s experience of AI a little bit better and in making sure that the overall impact of AI technologies is beneficial to humanity.

According to recent research by the US Federal Reserve, between 20 and 40 percent of employees use AI tools as part of their regular workflow. Some estimates are much higher. But much of this use is unofficial, with no company policy or guidelines for their use. While I don’t think organizations should stifle experimentation, there are clear risks of unofficial use, from pasting sensitive data into chatbots that could be incorporated into training future models and ultimately leaked to the world, to uncritically accepting hallucinatory AI responses, to violating intellectual property rights. I see education about both the practical uses of AI tools and the ethical considerations and safe practices of them as essential for any responsible organization. For many organizations, though, developing the expertise to do that education in-house is probably out of reach. That is where I see a role for someone like myself.

I am still figuring all of this out. This blog is going to be one place where I do that in public, and also a place where I offer my perspective on the world of AI. I will do my best to make it informative and useful. So please follow along! You can find Epistemic Technology on LinkedIn and Bluesky, or subscribe to our RSS feed.