California nonprofit corporation · charitable/tax-exempt recognition pending
Institute for AI Ethics in Human Cognition
Advancing AI safety by keeping humans in the loop where cognition, consent, and connection are at risk.
We are a newly formed, independent nonprofit working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and the most intimate parts of human life — memory, judgment, care, and companionship. Our work is education, research, and the development of public-interest standards, with particular attention to people whose cognition makes them more vulnerable to automated influence.
01 — Purpose
Why this Institute exists
The Institute for AI Ethics in Human Cognition advances education, research, and public-interest standards for the safe and ethical use of artificial intelligence where cognition, consent, and human connection are at risk, with particular attention to cognitively vulnerable populations and human-in-the-loop safeguards. Formal purpose statement
In plainer language: we study what happens when AI systems enter the places where people think, remember, decide, and depend on one another — and we work to make sure a person remains meaningfully in charge.
Our attention is on the situations where the stakes are highest and the protections are thinnest: dementia care and cognitive decline, mental health and isolation, caregiving relationships, and any setting where a person may not fully recognize that they are speaking with a machine, or may not be positioned to refuse.
02 — Why now
AI has moved into intimate domains
For most of its history, artificial intelligence sat at a distance from daily life — in search results, logistics, and back-office decisions. That distance has closed. Conversational systems now sit inside cognition, care, companionship, consent, and connection: reminding someone to take medication, keeping a lonely person company at midnight, summarizing a diagnosis, or standing in for a relationship.
These are not ordinary product settings. They involve people who may be tired, grieving, isolated, cognitively impaired, or simply trusting. Familiar consumer safeguards — a terms-of-service checkbox, a disclaimer, an opt-out buried in settings — were not designed for a person with memory loss, or for a caregiver making decisions on someone else's behalf.
We believe this gap is addressable, and that it is better addressed early: with evidence, with practitioners and families in the room, and with standards that assume a human being remains accountable for what happens.
- Capability is arriving faster than practice. Deployment in care settings is outpacing the guidance available to the people responsible for it.
- Consent is doing more work than it can bear. Fluctuating capacity, surrogate decision-making, and always-on systems strain conventional consent models.
- Attachment is a design outcome. Systems that feel like relationships create dependency risks that must be anticipated, not discovered.
03 — Values
The commitments that govern our work
Nine principles guide us — human oversight, dignity, consent, safety, transparency, accountability, evidence, independence, and public benefit. They gather into six working commitments.
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i
Human oversight
A person — not a system — holds responsibility for consequential decisions. Automation may inform and assist; it should not quietly replace judgment.
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ii
Dignity
People are not problems to be managed. Tools used in care should preserve autonomy, identity, and the right to be treated as a full participant in one's own life.
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iii
Consent
Consent must be meaningful, revisitable, and appropriate to capacity — including where a caregiver or surrogate is involved. Silence is not agreement.
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iv
Safety & transparency
People should be able to tell what they are interacting with, what it can and cannot do, and where its limits lie. Failure modes should be anticipated and disclosed.
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v
Accountability & evidence
Claims should be testable and traceable. We aim to publish our reasoning and methods, and to revise our positions when the evidence warrants it.
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vi
Independence & public benefit
Our conclusions are not for sale. We intend to organize our work, funding, and disclosures so that the public interest remains the deciding consideration.
04 — Goals
What we intend to build
The Institute is newly formed. The following describes intended directions rather than completed programs; scope and sequence will depend on capacity, partnerships, and funding.
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Education
Plain-language materials and briefings for families, caregivers, clinicians, and practitioners on what AI systems in care settings can and cannot responsibly do.
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Research
Studies and structured reviews of how AI-mediated interaction affects cognition, dependency, consent, and wellbeing — conducted with appropriate ethical review and collaborators.
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Public-interest standards
Draft guidance, evaluation criteria, and disclosure practices developed openly, for voluntary adoption by developers, care organizations, and procurement teams.
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Caregiver & vulnerable-population safeguards
Practical protections for people with cognitive impairment and for those who support them, including guidance on capacity, surrogate consent, and escalation to a human.
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Human-in-the-loop design guidance
Concrete patterns for keeping people meaningfully in control: oversight checkpoints, refusal behavior, honest self-description, and hand-off to accountable humans.
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Pilot work on ethically constrained care tools
Exploratory, small-scale pilots examining whether AI-assisted care tools can be built within strict ethical constraints — undertaken cautiously, with oversight, and reported honestly whether or not results are favorable.
05 — Initial focus areas
Where we are starting
- Cognitively vulnerable populationsDementia, cognitive decline, and other conditions that affect how a person evaluates, remembers, or resists automated influence.
- AI-mediated careSystems that participate in caregiving — reminders, monitoring, triage, companionship, and support for family and professional caregivers.
- Parasocial & dependency risksAttachment to systems that simulate relationship, and the effects of that attachment on isolation, trust, and decision-making.
- Human-in-the-loop safeguardsDesign and governance patterns that keep an accountable person present at the points where it matters most.
- Safety standardsEvaluation, disclosure, and deployment criteria for AI used in cognitively sensitive and care-adjacent contexts.
06 — Contact
Stay informed
The Institute is in its earliest stage. We expect to share published materials, draft standards, and collaboration opportunities as the work develops. We are particularly interested in hearing from clinicians, caregivers, researchers, ethicists, and engineers working on these questions.
Contact information coming soon.
This page is an announcement of the Institute's formation. We are not soliciting contributions at this time.