/ Rob Gordon

I'm a developer and researcher doing fieldwork in AI and epistemics. I build tools that help groups think, decide, and act together, then put them in front of real people and report what happens.

Most groups (teams, organizations, communities) still make decisions roughly the way they did before AI showed up. One question runs through my work, from a handful of volunteers up to a global platform: can groups keep trust and agency as more of their work passes through machines? Labor is part of that. As AI absorbs more of what people do, I want work to become more meaningful and more individual, not less.

Background

BRKT Labs (late 2025–present) · A small research group studying AI-mediated collaboration and healthier social fabric. I pilot AI-mediated coordination inside small teams and report what actually happens. I came here through a grant from the Future of Life Foundation to research coordination technologies.

AI for Human Reasoning Fellowship (2025) · With Nathan Young, I co-built the bot behind the first AI Community Note displayed on X. It is now among the top 50 Community Notes authors, and its notes have been seen by tens of millions of users.

Goodheart Labs (from 2022) · Built forecasting tools with Nathan Young.

Element AI (acquired by ServiceNow) · Built tools alongside machine learning researchers.

Constructive (from 2017) · Built websites for nonprofits.

Performance art and installations · Came to software by coding sound and visuals, after studying music composition at California Institute of the Arts.

Writing

Field Report: AI-Mediated Coordination in a Volunteer Nonprofit — BRKT Labs · Notes from piloting an AI coordination tool with a volunteer team, who read it as surveillance rather than support. The takeaway: coordination at any scale runs on trust, and a tool has to earn it before it can help.

Reading (Updated October 2026)

Field Guide to Thinking for Ourselves in the Age of AI — Allegra Cohen · A tour of the problems, solutions, fields, and people behind one question: can we keep thinking for ourselves as AI gets more capable?

If you're working on coordination, collective intelligence, deliberative process, governance, civic tech, institutional design, or anything nearby, I'd love to connect.