Ryan Baker

I'm a systems thinker. It started with software. Old enough to have had an TRS-80. Built a small-town startup out of my first programming job at 15 (1993). Later my interest in systems escaped the computer world and has reached economics, philosophy and philanthropy. So, that's how I got here.

These days, my first outlet is my Substack (substack.norabble.com). Perhaps unsurprisingly, AI has become a central topic. My years in software took me into architect roles, with security, reliability and development processes being core there, though you'd probably call me a generalist as I can't resist learning about everything.

I see policy as very important, but I see a big gap between the public and the internals of the IT industry, much less the AI industry. I first became interested in EA when I heard about it from some local Chicago groups (2010's). Climate change would have been top of my mind at that time.

In the background, I'm very interested in global development. I didn't get concerned about climate change because I'm an environmentalist. The typical environmentalist has a much deeper prioritization of nature than I do. I respect that view, but my path was always that humanity depends upon our environment, and it's inescapable that we have to take care of it, so it can take care of us. Mostly those views end up at the same place in terms of actions, but they do involve different ways about talking about the why of things.