Embodied
Learning through lived experience and consequence.
Human Agency in the AI Era
What happens when students stop thinking before asking AI?
Why does fluent language feel trustworthy?
Who shapes you when algorithms know you better than you know yourself?
Are we building capability or dependency?
Uncover the algorithm.
Build human agency.
unAlgo is a research and learning initiative building human agency in AI-mediated environments through the Investigator Framework, experiential labs, and behavioral measurement.
Students are growing up inside systems that predict, personalize, mirror, and persuade. unAlgo strengthens critical thinking, mental wellbeing, conscious cognition, and self-direction in AI-mediated environments.
Algorithms are powerful. Human agency is higher-order.
Investigators, not passengers
Why Now
The interface feels human.
The system is statistical.
Algorithmic feeds shape what feels familiar. Conversational AI shapes what feels true.
AI tools are evolving fast. Mental models endure.
The pause before accepting is where agency begins.
Why Human Agency
What must remain uniquely human.
AI systems are remarkable. They predict, generate, mirror, and persuade with extraordinary capability. They are fast. They are fluent. They scale.
Human intelligence is different in kind. We learn through the body, through consequence, through relationship, through silence, through doubt, through repair. We carry memory. We make meaning. We exercise moral judgment.
Algorithmic feeds shape what feels familiar. Conversational AI shapes what feels true. They now mediate the instinctual, embodied pathways through which we have always learned, trusted, and decided.
Meaning-Making
Turning pattern into purpose, repetition into memory, experience into wisdom.
Moral Imagination
Holding others in mind, repairing what breaks, choosing who we become.
The renaissance opportunity is in what humans can become. Critical thinking. Discernment. Voice. Agency.
Read more on Substack: Provoked by DesignThe Investigator Framework
A field guide for human agency.
Most AI education teaches people how to use tools. The Investigator Framework teaches something harder and more durable: how AI systems actually work, how they shape thinking and identity, and how to engage them with clarity and sovereignty.
Learning AI tools is important.
Learning how to think with them is essential.
01
Learning
How knowledge forms when certainty gets cheap.
02
Identity
Who we become in algorithmic mirrors.
03
Power
Who shapes what we see, trust, and believe.
04
Connection
What feels real, and what only feels like it.
05
Voice
Your thinking, your questions, your original contribution.
Labs
Where the framework becomes practice.
unAlgo labs are hands-on, interactive experiences where students, young adults, and community members examine their own human-AI interactions in real time.
Labs cover the algorithmic systems shaping daily life, the technical foundations of AI under the hood, conversational AI and large language models, and real-world case studies of AI permeating society.
Each lab combines direct encounter with structured reflection and measurement.
Human Agency Index™
Making agency observable.
The Human Agency Index (HAI™) is unAlgo's measurement tool, tracking shifts in judgment, discernment, and agency before and after lab experiences.
What we observe
- Verification before trusting fluent output
- Recognition of mirroring and persuasion
- Voice preservation under synthetic intimacy
- Judgment held under algorithmic pressure
- Investigative capacity vs automated acceptance
Currently under academic validation. Research partnerships welcome.
Partners
For the people shaping the future of learning and human-centered AI.
unAlgo is built around young people, and designed for the institutions, practitioners, researchers, and communities shaping how people learn, build, and become themselves with AI.
Learning Communities
For schools, universities, counselors, and youth-serving programs preparing people to learn and lead with AI.
Research & Innovation
For teams studying the future of learning, cognition, identity, mental health, and human-AI interaction.
Builders & Civic Partners
For organizations creating education, technology, and wellbeing initiatives with human agency at the center.
Complementary to work in responsible AI, AI literacy, education innovation, digital wellbeing, and youth mental health. Focused on the agency questions beneath them.
Research Portfolio
Research in progress.
Measurement frameworks, field work, and curriculum research currently in development around human agency, AI-mediated learning, identity, and mental health.
StatusComing Soon
About
Behind unAlgo
Decades as the architect behind enterprise AI and predictive systems. Designing infrastructure, leading cross-functional organizations, and advising on go-to-market strategy across youth mental health and education. These are sectors where algorithmic decisions shape the most vulnerable populations, and that inside view led to a different question: how do humans stay agents in systems designed to shape them?
unAlgo was founded to work on that question directly, developing the Investigator Framework, experiential labs, and the Human Agency Index. The work focuses on what matters most and is often hardest to see: judgment, discernment, critical thinking, self-trust, and the capacity to think for yourself in AI-mediated environments.
Research question driving this work
Can human agency in AI-mediated environments be meaningfully observed, strengthened, and linked to outcomes across learning, identity, and mental health?
Researcher, speaker, and advisor to educators and institutions navigating responsible AI. Studied applied AI and ethics at MIT and the University of Helsinki.
Connect
Let's talk.
Whether you are navigating AI in your organization, exploring a research partnership, or curious about the work, reach out.