From the talk
Towards sentience and sapience
A companion to Jamie Brennan's NIA session, Behavioral Science and AI: towards sentience and sapience (25 June 2026). Here are the points she raised, and where to go deeper.
-
AI is moving toward sapience
For a decade we treated AI as a question of capability: tokens, parameters, tasks. The conversation has shifted to understanding — what AI reads in us, and what we read into it. That path runs through theory of mind.
Read: Emotionally aware systems → -
AI needs emotional intelligence
We have given AI authority over real decisions, and it already works with emotion. A system acting in our interest has to understand emotion to do it well.
Read: Emotionally aware systems → -
Understanding has to be grounded
Genuine understanding is the hard part, and the first test of it is honesty: a system should only assert what it can trace back to a real source.
Read: Reliable AI in production → -
We build small worlds AI can understand
Rather than wait for AI to understand everything, we build bounded, private worlds — your data and your processes — that AI can work inside with nuance, air-gapped and under your control.
Read: Solved → -
From idea to working products
The thinking turns into tools you can use today.
See: Products →