Career-related News

I’m excited to say that as of Friday, I’m Chief Product Officer at Spirit AI. (The company website hasn’t had time to catch up with this yet, I know.)

I’ve been managing Character Engine for a couple of years now; I’ve been on Spirit’s board, and thus increasingly involved in the business side of the company, since the middle of last year. The promotion means that from here on I’ll also be directly involved with Ally, our product for detecting and responding to toxic interactions in online communities.

I am still doing a lot that’s directly tied to interactive narrative. (In fact, I’ve got a couple of blog posts lined up for this month about some of the interactive storytelling implications of Character Engine, for those who are curious about what we’ve been working on all this time.) And both products draw heavily on how we understand language, both its literal meaning and the social implications of words. Spirit employs some awesome talent in data science, natural language processing, and computational linguistics.

Meanwhile, Ally addresses a problem of how to build and protect healthy communities. That’s extremely important, and it’s an area where we need good technology and careful thought about the ethics of what we’re building. (And we’re hiring.)

So this continues to be a compelling job, and I’m working alongside some really terrific people. If you count the time I spent contracting before we had investment money, I’ve been working with Spirit in some capacity for nearly three years now — here’s hoping the next three years are as amazing as the last.