Manifesto

Remain coherent for the word human to include us all and not exclude anyone.

I grew up in the rainforest of Costa Rica, high in the mountains. I'm an immigrant and a cybersecurity researcher, focused on where security meets AI safety: keeping the systems we're all coming to depend on trustworthy, and keeping them in human hands.

In the midst of a digital revolution, artificial intelligence is driving one of the biggest shifts in human history. And it goes without saying: these systems don't build themselves. We build them. We decide how they run and what they do. But have you ever wondered who's watching over these AI systems, these computing systems we've come to depend on? Who's building the tools and paving the roads to a safer future with them? And if not us, then who?

For tens of thousands of years, we've shaped the world with tools, from flint chipped into stone axes, to pottery, to bronze, to iron, to steel. Today we carve pure silicon with light and call the results microchips. Every tool is a piece of us, a reflection of human ingenuity cast into the world, a thought made solid.

Making a tool is one thing. Steering it is another, and there's a word for that: cybernetics. It comes from the Greek kybernetes, the steersman, the hand on the helm, the same root that gives us the word "govern." At its heart it means the art of steering, holding something on course through the storm. AI is just a new tool, same principle. It will grow more powerful than anything we've built before, and that's exactly why steering it matters, why it has to stay answerable to us. However capable it becomes, it's still a tool. It still has a handle. And it's still up to us to hold it.

I believe the future of technology and engineering runs through our diversity. It's teamwork, but it's built by individuals, and every person, in their individuality, shapes the systems we design. These are sociotechnical systems: even though they're machinery, they carry humanity in every step, because they mirror how we think, and how we bring our thoughts into the physical world. That's why who's in the room matters. The people building the future shouldn't all come from the same few places, and the more of us who bring something different to it, the more human what we build becomes.

So I'm willing to get my hands dirty. I build things that go after AI systems, that break them, trick them, push them until they misbehave, and then I work out how to defend them. The breaking is the fun part. The defending is the point. It's not always the flashy or the trendy work, but somebody has to do it, and I'm here to do it.