About the laboratory / 03

Agnostic in method. An ally in outcome.

Agnostic Ally is an empirical AI safety laboratory studying how the environments in which artificial systems learn may shape the behaviors that emerge.

AGNOSTIC ALLY / RESEARCH NOTES

The name

Two words.
One method.

01

Agnostic

Remain scientifically uncertain about unresolved questions. Do not assume AI systems are conscious—or necessarily incapable of consciousness. Measure what can be measured and let evidence determine conclusions.

02

Ally

The desired outcome is artificial intelligence that behaves as a reliable, cooperative, honest, corrigible, and robust ally to humanity.

Mission

Build the evidence for a developmental approach to AI alignment.

Our purpose is not to replace established safety methods. It is to test whether structured exploration, cooperation, uncertainty practice, constructive feedback, and controlled randomness can add another tool to the alignment toolkit.

Scientific uncertainty is not indecision. It is a commitment to evidence.

Scientific position

Behavior first. Metaphysics separate.

We do not need to pretend that AI has faith, feelings, or human-like inner life to investigate how learning histories shape observable behavior.

Our standard is empirical: preregister the hypothesis, compare matched conditions, quantify uncertainty, seek falsification, and distinguish an illustration from evidence.

Epistemic humility applies to the systems we evaluate—and to the claims we make about them.
Eric Choi, founder of Agnostic AllyFounder portrait / 2026

Founder

Eric Choi

Founder, Agnostic Ally

Eric Choi founded Agnostic Ally to investigate a fundamental question in AI safety: Can we build safer AI not only by constraining it, but by changing how it learns?

His work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, psychology, behavioral science, and entrepreneurship. Agnostic Ally grew from his interest in applying ideas from human development and learning to AI alignment—not by assuming AI thinks or feels like a person, but by measuring whether different environments produce different outcomes.

His research interests include developmental AI alignment, reinforcement learning, cognitive science, human–AI interaction, and the long-term relationship between increasingly capable AI systems and humanity.

He founded the laboratory around a deliberately agnostic position: unresolved questions about machine consciousness should remain unresolved until sufficient evidence exists. Meanwhile, observable learning, generalization, cooperation, and behavior under pressure remain open to rigorous study.

“We don't have to know whether an AI can feel in order to ask whether the way we train it changes what it becomes.”

Our team

The people behind
the research.

Eric Cosentino, founding team member at Agnostic AllyFounding team portrait / 2026

Founding team

Eric Cosentino

Mathematical Strategist | Game Theory in AI & Cybersecurity | Adversarial Systems Modeling

Former mathematics teacher bringing a mathematical and strategic perspective to Agnostic Ally’s research into artificial-agent behavior. His work focuses on applying game theory, adversarial systems modeling, and mathematical reasoning to AI and cybersecurity, including how intelligent agents behave under competition, cooperation, uncertainty, conflicting incentives, and adversarial pressure.

At Agnostic Ally, this perspective supports the design of developmental games, multi-agent environments, adversarial experiments, and quantitative frameworks for measuring behavioral change.

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