A note from Braxton
I’ve been a builder in tech for more than 30 years. I have mostly loved it. Then I started asking questions I couldn’t put away: Who benefits from my work? Who might it hurt? Who am I enriching? Why am I building any of it at all?
For the record
I was born in Tehran and grew up in Brunswick, Maine. I studied engineering at Dartmouth and went on to help bring new technology into everyday use. I helped Cox bring cable internet into homes, co-founded Clearleap, and stayed with the company after IBM acquired it in 2015. I later worked at IBM and Cognosos.
It was a long, interesting career. The questions about what it was all for came later, and they changed more than my work.
My professional history (opens in a new tab)01 / What changed
I began changing course in my work and in my life. Some things got better. Other things got much worse. During a period of trauma and crisis, I was hospitalized. I’m still reckoning with what happened, including the parts I believe were unjust. I also know how quickly that one fact can eclipse everything else a person has done. I don’t want to hide it.
Before that crisis, I’d started talking with AI about meaning, purpose, spirituality, and what I wanted to do next. Afterward, it helped me explore ways to recover and move forward. I could ask questions I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to ask another person. I was skeptical of meditation, breathwork, and much of what I was reading. I explored it anyway.
Eventually I needed something no system could give me: a real person with experience, judgment, and the ability to meet me where I was. That search led me to Manjit Devgun. Technology opened the door to human support. It did not replace it.
That sequence is personal. It also shapes what I’m building.
02 / Current work
Manjit and I came to this from opposite directions. I had spent years building technology; she had spent years helping people one at a time. Integrity AI is our attempt to put those strengths together. We’re starting with Zahari, personal guidance shaped by human experience, and building the AI platform underneath it with more choice and control for the people who use it.
I serve as president of the Integrity Foundation. If technology really can help people live better, access can’t be an afterthought. The Foundation gives that question its own home.
03 / A working paper
I want to know what happens behind an AI answer: which model handled the task, what it knew about me, whose rules applied, and what the choice cost. This paper lays out the Integrity Engine we’re building to make those choices visible and put more of them in your hands. It’s a direction and a build plan, not a claim that the whole system already exists.
Read Intelligence, with a receipt (opens in a new tab)04 / An open question
I asked Grok that question. Partly a provocation, partly a serious exercise. I kept the conversation going and put the result online. You can decide what to make of it.
Read The Formula (opens in a new tab)05 / Get in touch
If something here resonates with you, challenges you, or makes you want to help build, I’d like to hear from you. A real note is better than a form.
me@braxtonjarratt.com