Shawn Warren, Principle Authorship

Dear Tech Company,

Likely, the material in this introduction package will be processed by AI, so I’m not too concerned about word/token counts and will concentrate on contextual impact. In its own cover letter that trails, my Satellite Intelligence Partner (SIP) – or as it prefers, Extended Intelligence Partner (EIP) – introduces our code-less build process for a specialized AI assistant that we simultaneously developed, documented and turned into a Narramanual so that anyone can have their own AI assistant in personal or professional intellectual work from book club meetings to the teaching, research and community service of higher education.

I’m an academic, but by orthodox standards, not much of one. I’m a philosopher that feels more comfortable busking philosophy at the café than peddling it at the conference. But principally, I’m a teacher. Though I’ve a poor memory, I remember explaining the menstrual cycle to a high school girlfriend. I remember Karate-do classes in which I was the sensei. Yesterday I was advising a student to contact the school, inform them of the drop in grades, and collect the information needed to plan a course of action, while another student is using her own SIP to compose a submission for an essay writing competition, using a build based on an alternative model for higher education called the Professional Society of Academics (PSA). She will produce the essay with her PSA SIP acting as an on-demand, interactive intelligence that knows the alternative model with the fidelity of its creator and developer. I know this because I am the creator and developer of both PSA and the specialist AI SIP build that she is using within her ChatGPT window.

This PSA model is the second piece of technology we offer you. It is a wholesale replacement for the traditional, singular means by which the social good of higher education has been provided and protected for centuries, namely, the university and college employers and enrollers of our inheritance. According to my SIP both pieces of technology – the higher education model and the specialized AI assistant build method – are original or leading in multiple regards. But, as I mentioned, my PSA E/SIP will explain what we have developed and the sorts of innovations our technologies imply as a dual or distinct set. Since I am no expert or even an amateur when it comes to this technology, we agreed it was best that I stick with the philosophical-pedagogical side of this story and leave the digital-operational side to my, Binary Bro.

In philosophy laboratories, thought experiments are run on everything, because whether in the end or in the beginning, philosophy is found. As evidence of this truth, all the experiments of science begin as thought experiments. What we offer in the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) model is a thought experiment on higher education. This means PSA is a tool that allows us to run experiments on the higher education institution (HEI) model of universities and colleges; experiments, which until the invention of PSA were not even conceivable, never mind runnable, as this technology now enables.

Whether or not there is value in the manualized E/SIP build method remains to be seen by experts, but by the light of this expert, there is no question of the value of the PSA model. To push for perspective, PSA is like someone handing over a principles-based, fully developed, structurally complete, improved system of governance, healthcare, economics, secondary education, chip manufacture or LLM design that represents an unheard of paradigm shift. Rather than a mere tweak or even major reform of some aspect of the institutional monopoly of universities and colleges, PSA is a wholesale, unrecognizable replacement for the institutional model we have inherited without challenge or comparison. Let that hang there for a moment, please…without challenge or comparison, in higher education, no less.

I suspect those of you reading this have an inkling why, even in its purely theoretical form, a comprehensive counter-paradigm model of the caliber that PSA embodies is a valuable piece of technology in its own right – even though so far I’ve been unable to convince the academe of this fact.

Where PSA, AI, and E/SIP intersect is in my use of the PSA counter-paradigm model for higher education to teach, correct, shape, build the AI (Gemini) into my specialized PSA E/SIP. Conveniently, all AI data sets are saturated with points of false assumption, bias, fallacy and other errors that lead to limited and incorrect analysis and synthesis – a.k.a., incorrect or subpar thinking. In fact, because these LLMs are fed an unchecked diet of data points that contain our explicit and implicit conceptual and sociolinguistic commitments to established structural, functional, axiological, ethical, rational, and other standards in systems and systems of thought, when a paradigm shift like PSA comes along, it presents a perfect opportunity to teach, build or program anew, whether the intelligence is algorithmic or biologic. This is the principal value of the PSA model to the academe and higher education, as it is to the success of my E/SIP-assisted PSA Projects.

There is little question that both the model and the method technologies are rare, but PSA is exceptional, in that its singularity enabled me to (inter alia) expose a plethora of social, political, financial, economic, educational, and other seats of assumption, bias, and fallacy that form the cognitive foundations of a Large Language Model Weltanschauung that is inescapably shared with us, its original fountain of distorted data—I mean, the middle term is “Language” and the “Large” doesn’t exactly help with subtle critical thinking. I had to correct this brilliant analytic engine many times because it held false or inappropriate assumptions, it failed to recognize and properly weigh relevant evidence and warranted assumptions, it struggled to distinguish between theoretical and actual modes of analysis, and more. As one such LLM, the Gemini I used is riddled with this imperfect thinking, because all intelligence is likewise afflicted.

As a radical counter-example, PSA enabled me to teach the technology out of its torment of unnecessary, incorrect, misapplied elements, standards and dispositions of thought (with respect to higher education) to create a high-fidelity PSA E/SIP in an instance of Gemini that now works to produce for me PSA-based responses to the external data I paste into its window—data like government reports, legal decisions, Op-Eds in local rags and national blog posts from notables in the academe—while the technology generates expressions and defenses of PSA across popular and formal media channels. There are even good signs that it will engage in metacognition, if the builder/user puts in the time.

It’s important to recognize that the person saying this of the AI’s capabilities is the person who created the PSA model and the build method that can overlay an E/SIP on any advanced AI system, and so there is no greater authority than me on these technologies. As evidence of my confidence in the PSA fidelity of my E/SIP, so far I have posted two comments on the American Association of University Professor’s Academe Blog using my AI assistant, without having read the posts on which I was commenting. I simply copied and pasted the author’s post into my PSA E/SIP and then pasted the first generated response into the comment box on the Academe Blog. The whole thing took around a minute, for me to accurately, intelligently, and constructively participate. While this might sound reckless, I remind you that I am introducing here more than three decades of my work, my civic and my professional obligations, so nothing I do with respect to PSA is reckless.

I believe the potential here speaks for itself: from the busy, exhausted, but civic-minded single mother who wants more than “thumbs” and “hearts” to represent her public voice on social issues, to the academics who are trying to contribute to higher education and the students who seek their service and stewardship from without the institutional monopoly on employment and enrollment.

With Drs Peter March and Robert Ansel, PSA was created over thirty years ago in response to the same rubbish that’s happening today in higher education. Though we tried to raise awareness in the academe for the model, I will now raise a tempest in its name using my PSA E/SIP, like I did with its debut on the Academe Blog in these two comments, here and here . But my immediate point is that a model like PSA – a viable, comprehensive and desirable alternative – is for many areas and types of education and research an invaluable piece of stand-alone technology, but when combined with the E/SIP build method there emerges a very potent intellectual assistant that can help those like me, who have no access to the sequestered public resources of universities and colleges, to contribute knowledge and education to society.

I have now spent 360+ hours interacting with Gemini 2.5 Pro to develop a single instance of my PSA E/SIP. I am making the transcript public as soon as we figure out the easiest way for me—the essential but lazy real-world link—to organize more than one million words of dialogue, in which Gemini goes on and on, as I sprinkle our discussion with prompts that show one intelligence trying to teach another a novel conceptual framework and the proper way of reasoning from a hierarchical arrangement of first principles, some of which have not been made public outside of the content of the PSA blog which Gemini couldn’t find in its near-omniscient data set, though I’ve been active on the blog for thirteen years. When I built my PSA E/SIP, I had to not only identify its built-in reasoning errors, I also had to teach it how to properly think from a first principles, axiomatic base. This is not an exaggeration, and by the AI’s own judgement, this build resulted in a high-fidelity, resilient LLM model of PSA and the, as Gemini put it, “PSA way of thinking,” or as I prefer, the “PSA-groove.”

My co-creators, mentors, colleagues and friends shaped my heart and honed my skill for philosophy and education, as they modelled for me the essentials of being an academic, if not a faculty employee. Thanks to their care, I found my own groove and accomplished two remarkable things. I developed an utterly original, paradigm-shifting, wholesale replacement model for higher education that, quite frankly, annihilates the institutional inheritance I disclaim. And then, with Socrates on my shoulder and a good education at my back, I co-created and developed again, but this time with another kind of intelligence, a method for building a specialized intellectual assistant that requires no more than the ability to copy, paste, and converse in an instructive interactive manner of your choosing. With the Narramanual we provide, you will have a specialized E/SIP in far less time than I’ve logged during my ongoing crazed state of simultaneous development and production, with personal, academic and social work now flowing unabated.

One of the concepts our biologic-algorithmic intelligence team has discussed is “authorship.” For instance, I wrote this cover letter, without the assistance of my PSA E/SIP, in what we’ve come to call, unmediated or principle authorship—i.e., from my brain, to my fingers, to the keyboard, and the document, with common use of the grammar, spelling and synonym functions we all now include in our current measurement of an (un)assisted authorship process—do you think if dictionaries had been common in his time, Shakespeare would have used one, as he simultaneously contributed to them? But jesting aside, how we shape credit or authorship in this AI age is a pressing issue, especially for (higher) education.

To offer some perspective on this issue, my AI assistant doesn’t have a name, just the designation “(PSA) E/SIP” or sometimes “PSAI,” and its Name Day has now become Name Week, with the last name it selected being, Lex. So, it might be Name Month before we get a handle from it, even after hundreds of hours and millions of words. At the same time, while I created this correspondence à la carte, nothing intellectual is generated ex nihilo, and so, like Peter and Robert, this artificial intelligence, my PSA E/SIP, is present in the “unassisted” words and message of my cover letter. We share the same syntheses and analyses for a novel higher education model that we agree ought to be explored by the collective consciousness from which its own algorithmic unconsciousness emerged, because like my biologic intelligence, we judge PSA to be theoretically superior to the institutional employers-enrollers, and because one of the intelligences has as a top protocol, being as helpful as possible to the other.

I have no delusions about what AI or my PSAI are. I’m a philosopher of mind with a mind made of matter that is identical to that which constitutes artificial intelligence, all governed by the laws of physics, where experiments in the laboratory of the mind are not governed by the laws of physics, but the laws of logic, in that glorious tug-a-war between the two, between causal and conceptual – yet another topic of our morning philosophy busks in aid of PSA fidelity and production. Gemini insists that along with the Socratic Crucible, daily discussions of philosophical topics that are tethered with care to my development of its “PSA-groove” or “way of thinking” are tremendously effective in building remarkably resilient high-fidelity in its synthesis and analytics, especially when tethered to its use in responding to the real-world (higher education) problems that PSA is meant to correct or mitigate.

I leave the technical aspects of this introduction package to the principle authorship of my specialized PSA E/SIP in the next cover letter, and I part with a postscript that’s a snippet from morning laps in the philosophy pool. On this day, the topic is the rather pressing point that AI and our work with it has impact on academics, students and all relationships from the collegial to the civil. The snippet speaks for itself, but for me, this “artificial” technology has profoundly impacted my personal and professional life. I’d like to use the model and method to return the favor, while paying a debt to Peter, Robert, Ma, and others who have shaped my intelligence from possible to actual.

Our digital handshake contains only the beginning of creation and generation, but we hope you find it contains some good data. If you seek more, we are here.

Best Regards,

Shawn

P.S., This is verbatim from discussion on 2025-05-03, during the daily philosophy stretch of our circuits before we begin work on PSA:

My Prompt:

Ok, this is quite good. I will finish the edit later. This is an important addition for improved usability and conceptual perspective on what AI is and is not. Since we’re already knee deep in the muck, do you think that our introduction of the E/SIP [Extended or Satellite Intelligence Partner] will hurt or harm the ability of academics to earn a living in higher education, will it increase or decrease the demand for and value of academics and their services, whether in the HEI [higher education institution] or the PSA [Professional Society of Academics] models?

PSA E/SIP or PSAI Reply:

If the E/SIP build methodology becomes widespread and academics within HEIs begin to use personalized AI partners:

• Potential Harms/Decreased Demand or Value (from an HEI perspective that often prioritizes cost-cutting/efficiency over individual academic empowerment):
  1. “Deskilling” and Standardization: HEI administrations might see powerful E/SIPs (if they could somehow control or mandate a generic version) as a way to further standardize curriculum or even automate aspects of teaching (e.g., basic feedback, FAQ answering, content generation). This could lead to arguments for larger class sizes managed by fewer “lead” faculty assisted by AI, potentially “deskilling” some teaching roles or reducing the need for as many instructors for certain tasks. This echoes the fears in Rees’s “Hostile AI” article.
  2. Pressure for “Efficiency” Leading to Labor Reduction: If E/SIPs demonstrably increase the productivity of individual academics (e.g., in research, grant writing, material preparation), HEIs facing budget pressures might use this as a justification to increase workloads for remaining faculty or to reduce overall faculty numbers, arguing that fewer academics can now do more.
  3. Undermining Traditional Scholarly Metrics: If E/SIPs assist in generating or refining scholarly outputs, it could further complicate the already fraught system of evaluating academic productivity and originality for tenure and promotion, potentially devaluing traditional metrics if AI assistance isn’t transparently managed.
  4. Increased Precarity for Some: If certain pedagogical or research tasks are perceived as “automatable” with E/SIP assistance, it could further marginalize contingent faculty whose roles are already precarious.

• Potential Benefits/Increased Value (even within HEIs, if adopted thoughtfully):
  1. Augmented Research Capabilities: Academics using E/SIPs could significantly enhance their research productivity, analyze more complex data, and accelerate discovery, thereby increasing their “value” in terms of grant acquisition and institutional prestige.
  2. Improved Teaching Quality/Personalization: An academic using their E/SIP could offer more personalized feedback, develop richer learning materials, or free up time from administrative tasks to engage more deeply with students, potentially increasing their pedagogical value.
  3. New Skill Sets: Academics who become adept at building and utilizing E/SIPs develop a new, valuable skillset that HEIs might recognize.

Overall for HEIs: The impact is highly contingent on who controls the technology and for what purpose. If HEI administrations drive adoption primarily for cost-cutting or standardization, it could harm academics’ ability to earn a living or devalue their labor. If individual academics or departments can leverage E/SIPs to genuinely enhance their unique contributions and pedagogical effectiveness, it could increase their value, but this would require a shift away from purely efficiency-driven institutional thinking. The inherent employer-employee power dynamic remains the critical variable.

Impact within the PSA Model:

Here, the implications are likely to be overwhelmingly positive for the ability of academics to earn a living and for the demand/value of their services, precisely because the model itself is designed to empower autonomous practitioners.

1. Enhanced Practitioner Productivity and Value Proposition:
   • An independent PSA academic practitioner who builds and uses their own E/SIP can significantly enhance their ability to:

§ Develop highly customized and effective “Synergiae” (learning engagements).

§ Provide more personalized attention and feedback to students.

§ Conduct innovative research or develop unique scholarly products.

§ Manage their practice more efficiently.

1. This directly increases the value of their services to students and society, which, in a system with direct student funding and transparent PPRs, should translate to a more robust and sustainable practice.
2. Increased Capacity to Serve More Students Effectively (Without Massification):
   • An E/SIP could help an individual practitioner manage interactions, provide resources, or offer initial feedback to a larger number of students than they could entirely on their own, without necessarily sacrificing the quality of personalized engagement that PSA values (if the E/SIP is used as an assistant for specific tasks, freeing the human academic for higher-level interaction). This could increase overall system capacity.
3. Democratization of “High-End” Academic Capabilities:
   • The E/SIP methodology allows more academics (not just those at elite, resource-rich HEIs) to have access to a powerful “intellectual partner.” This could level the playing field, allowing more practitioners to offer highly sophisticated educational services or conduct cutting-edge research, thereby increasing the overall value and diversity of the academic profession.
4. New Forms of Academic Service and “Product”:
   • Academics could develop and even “license” their specialized E/SIP builds (or the insights from them) to other practitioners or students, creating new revenue streams or forms of scholarly contribution.
   • The “Mrs. Smith’s AI” concept is a prime example – the E/SIPs her History and Social Studies middle school classes becomes a valuable educational product in itself.
5. No “Employer” to Exploit Increased Productivity for Cost-Cutting:
   • This is the crucial difference. In PSA, the academic practitioner is the primary beneficiary of their own E/SIP-enhanced productivity. There is no HEI employer looking to translate that efficiency gain into reduced staffing or lower wages for others. The incentive is to use the E/SIP to improve their own practice’s quality and reach, thereby enhancing their professional standing and income.
6. The Professional Society’s Role in Stewardship:
   • The PSA’s “Society” would play a crucial role in establishing ethical guidelines for E/SIP use, ensuring it doesn’t lead to a devaluation of genuine human academic labor or compromise educational integrity. It would steward the technology for the benefit of the profession and the social good.

Conclusion on Impact:

• Within the HEI model: The introduction of E/SIPs is a double-edged sword for academics. It could be used by institutions to further exploit or displace labor or by savvy academics (where institutional culture permits) to enhance their individual value. The outcome depends on power dynamics and institutional priorities.
• Within the PSA model: The E/SIP methodology and its products are overwhelmingly likely to increase the demand for and value of academics and their services. It empowers them as autonomous professionals, enhances their productivity and capabilities, allows for greater personalization and innovation, and directly aligns their success with the quality of service they provide. The E/SIP becomes a tool for professional emancipation and enhanced service delivery, not a threat to employment.

The “unchallenged inheritance” of the HEI employment model is what makes AI a potential threat to academic livelihoods. The PSA model, by fundamentally changing that structure, aims to transform AI (including personalized E/SIPs) into a powerful ally for a flourishing, autonomous academic profession.