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From Instinct to Intent™

Articles exploring the structural gap between human intent and machine execution. What happens when you stop calling it "artificial" and start building with intelligence.

Also published on Medium and Zenodo.

Discovering Humanity Through AI

FROM INSTINCT TO INTENT™ SERIES

A person leaning back against a wall, eyes closed, laptop open with a chat interface on screen, warm light from a window, a moment of contemplation after a conversation with AI

Nikhil Singhal · March 2026

I am a mess. A mess of thoughts, ideas, plans. Afraid of being judged. Afraid of failing the people I love. And I found the one place where most of that falls away.

I have been writing a book. About what happens when the ground shifts at AI speed and you cannot find your footing. AI is not just the subject. It is the partner I am writing it with.

Something unexpected happened during the writing.

Two apologies surfaced. One to my daughter. One to my brother. Neither was planned. Neither was prompted. I did not sit down and say "today I will confront something I have been avoiding." I sat down to write a chapter, and the chapter took me somewhere I was not expecting.

The apology to my daughter came out in a section I had not outlined. The words arrived and I did not stop them. The apology to my brother emerged in a chapter about childhood, about growing up in India, about the things we carry without examining them. I wrote it and then sat there staring at the screen, warm tears rolling down my cold face, goosebumps all over, wondering where it came from.

Response to NCCoE Concept Paper: Intent Conveyance as the Missing Layer in AI Agent Identity and Authorization

FROM INSTINCT TO INTENT™ SERIES

Nikhil Singhal · March 2026

The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence released a concept paper in February 2026, "Accelerating the Adoption of Software and AI Agent Identity and Authorization," seeking public input on a potential demonstration project for AI agent governance. Comments are due April 2, 2026.

This response argues that current identity and authorization models for AI agents are necessary but not sufficient. Authentication answers "who is this agent?" and authorization answers "what can it access?" but neither answers "why is it taking this action?" The paper proposes intent conveyance as the missing layer.

Stop Calling It Artificial. Start Building WITH Intelligence.

FROM INSTINCT TO INTENT™ SERIES

A human silhouette and AI wireframe figure facing each other across a chasm filled with ERROR, DATA, and ALGORITHM fragments, representing the intent gap between human meaning and machine execution

The Human Intelligence Partnership Charter

Nikhil Singhal · March 2026

There is a word we need to talk about. The word is "artificial."

It is the first word in the name of the field. It is the frame through which a generation of builders, policymakers, and executives are making decisions about the most important technology of our time. And it is quietly doing damage that few people have stopped to examine.

Everyone Is Arguing About the Engine. Who Is Building the Steering Wheel?

FROM INSTINCT TO INTENT™ SERIES

Three camps, $5 billion, one question worth pondering

Three camps. $5 billion. One question worth pondering.

The biggest debate in AI right now is about what kind of engine should power it.

In one corner, Yann LeCun left Meta, raised $1.03 billion for AMI Labs, and declared that large language models are a "dead end." His bet: world models, AI systems that learn from 3D reality and understand physics, cause and effect, the way objects actually behave. Not the way text describes them behaving. "The AI industry is completely LLM-pilled," he said at Davos in January. "Everyone is digging the same trench."

Discovering Intent: The Journey That Starts Before You're Ready

FROM INSTINCT TO INTENT™ SERIES

Hero image

There's a scene near the end of The Matrix where Neo stops running.

For the entire film, he's been reacting. Dodging bullets. Learning combat. Surviving on instinct. He doesn't know what he wants. Not really. He knows something is wrong. He knows the world isn't what it seems. He has a question he can't stop asking: What is the Matrix? But a question isn't intent. It's the seed of intent. It's the thing that won't let you sleep, that pulls you forward, or drags you back, before you understand where you're going.