Whitepapers - The Working Source Documents

James Maconochie | Architecture & Attention
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All of the Substack posts and associated audio are derived from a set of working whitepapers that I continue to edit and add to. This section is for anyone who is interested in going deeper and hearing the full context of my thinking. jamesmaconochie.substack.com

  1. 3d ago

    4.2 - Beyond Scale, Part 2: The Modular Architecture

    Part 2 turns from diagnosis to design: the proposed modular system with executive orchestration, multi-level plasticity and continuous learning, multi-agent coordination, alignment handled by design rather than as an afterthought, a phased development roadmap, and the broader implications. This is the audio edition of Beyond Scale: Towards Biologically Inspired Modular Architectures for Adaptive AI, presented in two parts. The full written whitepaper, with references and intellectual foundations, is at jamesmaconochie.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesmaconochie.substack.com

    4.2 - Beyond Scale, Part 2: The Modular Architecture

  2. Jul 9

    4.1 - Beyond Scale, Part 1: The Biological Blueprint

    Part 1 builds the case against pure scaling and draws the lessons of evolution: why brute-force scale is misguided, how language became humanity’s cognitive scaffolding, the brain’s modular, orchestrated design, and how its very biases become opportunities for a better kind of AI. This is the audio edition of Beyond Scale: Towards Biologically Inspired Modular Architectures for Adaptive AI, presented in two parts. The full written whitepaper, with references and intellectual foundations, is at jamesmaconochie.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesmaconochie.substack.com

    4.1 - Beyond Scale, Part 1: The Biological Blueprint

  3. Jul 2

    2.2 - Attention Is All We Have, Part 2: Wisdom and the Shared Future

    Part 2 turns from what attention is to what we do with it: the limits of scale in human life and in AI, a modular architecture that moves beyond pattern matching, the ethics of attention, and the shared future of human and machine awareness. This is the audio edition of Attention Is All We Have: What AI’s Greatest Breakthrough Can Teach Us About Being Human, presented in two parts. The full written whitepaper, with references and intellectual foundations, is at jamesmaconochie.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesmaconochie.substack.com

    2.2 - Attention Is All We Have, Part 2: Wisdom and the Shared Future

  4. Jun 25

    2.1 - Attention Is All We Have, Part 1: The Shared Architecture

    Part 1 lays the foundation: how the 2017 Transformer rediscovered a solution evolution had already found, attention as the shared currency of intelligence across evolution, the human brain, and machines, and how the Mastery of Life framework applies that same principle to human flourishing. This is the audio edition of Attention Is All We Have: What AI’s Greatest Breakthrough Can Teach Us About Being Human, presented in two parts. The full written whitepaper, with references and intellectual foundations, is at jamesmaconochie.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesmaconochie.substack.com

    2.1 - Attention Is All We Have, Part 1: The Shared Architecture

  5. Jun 18

    1 - Beyond FLOPS: The Evolutionary Processing Unit and the Roadmap to AGI

    A thought experiment: the cumulative computational effort of four billion years of evolution dwarfs our fastest supercomputers by twenty orders of magnitude. The lesson isn’t to out-compute evolution, but to learn the architecture it discovered, modularity, plasticity, causal grounding, and efficient attention, embodied in the human brain, which charts a more promising path to AGI than brute-force scaling. This is the audio edition of Beyond FLOPS: The Evolutionary Processing Unit and the Roadmap to AGI, presented in a single part. The full written whitepaper, with references and intellectual foundations, is at jamesmaconochie.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesmaconochie.substack.com

    1 - Beyond FLOPS: The Evolutionary Processing Unit and the Roadmap to AGI

  6. Jun 12

    10.3 - AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice, Part 3: The Interlocks and the Limits

    The final part of the audio edition of AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice turns the framework on itself. It shows how the four requirements compose into a single integrated specification, names what no architecture can supply from inside its own walls, the practitioner, the regulatory regime, the cultural substrate, and traces how each requirement interlocks with the liability regime: standard of care, safe harbor, the reasonable-practitioner standard, and discoverable evidence. It then tests the architecture under pressure, Goodhart's Law, ceremonial compliance, and defensive over-documentation, and closes with eight objections answered directly, from "the categorical claim overreaches" to "the mentors are the cohort with the most cognitive debt." This is the audio edition of AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice, a whitepaper from Architecture & Attention, presented in three parts. Read the full whitepaper, explore the companion papers, and subscribe at jamesmaconochie.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesmaconochie.substack.com

    10.3 - AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice, Part 3: The Interlocks and the Limits

  7. Jun 12

    10.2 - AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice, Part 2: The Specification

    Part two of the audio edition of AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice makes the failure mode concrete. Two loan officers approve the same mortgage; two reviewers submit the same manuscript review; in each pair, one has exercised judgment, and the other has performed it, and no audit can tell them apart. From there, the episode specifies the four design requirements any AI governance framework must meet to keep human wisdom in authority over the machine: cultivate the conditions under which practice develops, require its exercise through load-bearing friction, preserve the institutional conditions that sustain it across careers, and surface signatures of its absence at the aggregate layers where artifact inspection cannot reach. This is the audio edition of AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice, a whitepaper from Architecture & Attention, presented in three parts. Read the full whitepaper, explore the companion papers, and subscribe at jamesmaconochie.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesmaconochie.substack.com

    10.2 - AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice, Part 2: The Specification

  8. Jun 12

    10.1 - AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice, Part 1: The Invisible Variable

    Part one of the audio edition of AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice. AI is entering judgment-laden roles- clinical, financial, legal, regulatory, academic- faster than governance frameworks are adapting, and those frameworks are designed against the wrong failure mode. This episode opens with the I-DEAS story, a finite element analysis package that confidently approved a structure that would not have stood, then lays out the five structural claims: governance-by-inspection cannot distinguish practice from performance, cognitive debt compounds silently at institutional scale, the System 1/System 2 distinction is the operative variable, structural dissent must be architected rather than assumed, and institutional architecture and individual practice compose like reinforced concrete, each necessary, neither sufficient. This is the audio edition of AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice, a whitepaper from Architecture & Attention, presented in three parts. Read the full whitepaper, explore the companion papers, and subscribe at jamesmaconochie.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesmaconochie.substack.com

    10.1 - AI Governance and the Architecture of Practice, Part 1: The Invisible Variable
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All of the Substack posts and associated audio are derived from a set of working whitepapers that I continue to edit and add to. This section is for anyone who is interested in going deeper and hearing the full context of my thinking. jamesmaconochie.substack.com

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