James Maconochie

Technology leader exploring AI architecture and human-AI collaboration

I’m a technology leader with 25 years of experience implementing complex systems across enterprise organizations. After two and half decades in consulting helping companies navigate digital transformation, I’m now focused on a question that I believe is one of the most critical of the moment: how do we build artificial intelligence that augments human capability rather than replaces it?

Philosophical Framework

My work explores how intelligent systems (both biological and artificial) construct models of reality and navigate the gap between perception and truth. I examine the continuum from evolutionary computation to human consciousness, focusing on the architectural principles that enable systems to discern signal from noise and allocate limited attention toward what matters.

Core inquiries driving my research:

  • Consciousness as Reality Modeling: How attention mechanisms create the theater of conscious experience, and what this reveals about the nature of subjective reality
  • Truth in Evolutionary Context: How biological systems evolved to approximate truth sufficiently for survival, and what constraints this places on human perception
  • The Architecture of Understanding: How systems transform data into meaning, and whether there are universal principles governing this transformation across domains
  • Wisdom in Attention-Scarce Environments: How to allocate limited cognitive resources when facing essentially infinite information and possibilities

This framework bridges the evolutionary constraints that shaped biological intelligence with the engineering principles needed to create artificial systems that can augment human understanding without distorting our relationship with reality.

Background

  • BS Civil Engineering, Imperial College London (1993)
  • MS Civil Engineering, MIT (1994)
  • 25+ years leading technology programs and transformations
  • Based in Boston, Massachusetts

Current Focus

I’m exploring how principles from biological intelligence, in particular modularity, plasticity, causal reasoning, and efficient attention allocation might inform the development of artificial intelligence systems. Rather than pursuing artificial general intelligence through pure computational scaling, I’m interested in architectures that enhance human decision-making and preserve human agency.

My research integrates frameworks across multiple domains:

  • Evolutionary computation and the constraints that shaped biological intelligence
  • Human-AI symbiosis and Augmented Human Intelligence (AHI)
  • Attention theory as a unifying principle across biological and artificial systems
  • Practical frameworks for deliberate living in an age of information abundance

Read about my journey

What I’m Looking For

I’m exploring opportunities where strategic thinking, systems architecture, and implementation experience can shape how we build intelligent systems that serve humanity. This could include:

  • Architecture leadership in companies building biologically-inspired AI systems or public-facing technology platforms
  • Public sector leadership roles in technology modernization, digital service delivery, or AI strategy for city/state government
  • Research collaborations with academic labs or institutions exploring human-AI interaction and public policy
  • Strategic advisory roles for organizations navigating AI implementation, ethics, and public impact

While my current research focuses on AI architecture and human-AI collaboration, my 25+ years of experience spans public and private sectors, from modernizing state credentialing systems to scaling genomic platforms. I’m particularly interested in roles that bridge technical depth with public impact.

If you’re working on human-AI collaboration, AI safety and alignment, modular AI architectures, or navigating how these technologies transform organizations and industries I would welcome a conversation.

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