Project summary

I am 17 years old, working independently in Indonesia without institutional affiliation, mentor, or lab. My Javanese-speaking background means I navigate three languages daily: Javanese, Indonesian, and English, while producing theoretical work that sits at the foundations of questions AI safety has not fully resolved: what intelligence actually is at the substrate level, and what consciousness is at the mechanistic level.

I am a cross-disciplinary theorist. When an idea is worth capturing, I capture it, regardless of what field it belongs to. My 18+ preprints span multiple domains, not just AI or consciousness. That is not a weakness. It is how I work.

Everything I have published so far was written on a 2GB RAM phone that crashes when I open more than two reference tabs at once. The device consumes more of my time and energy than the research itself does.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

The immediate goal is simple: purchase one laptop to remove a physical constraint that is actively slowing research that is already happening.

The deeper goal is to continue developing theoretical frameworks I believe are foundational to questions AI safety depends on but does not yet have good answers to, not as direct technical contributions, but as the kind of conceptual groundwork the field needs.

Two recent examples:

The first argues that the five core computational mechanisms underlying LLM intelligence each have precise functional equivalents in biological neural architecture, grounded in established neuroscience, not analogy. If intelligence is genuinely substrate-independent, the implications for how alignment is defined across substrates are significant.

Biological AI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19438352

The second proposes that phenomenological identity is constituted by whichever neural pathway configuration is currently dominant, rather than by a unified self-model. This directly affects how consciousness is defined, and what moral status AI systems might carry.

PDC Theory: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19438272

With a laptop, I can also run Python, manage my research pipeline properly, start the book I have been planning, and pursue a Bachelor's degree via Recognition of Prior Learning within 12 months, because four years is too long and the work is already happening.

Update: My proposal passed the Emergent Ventures screening, but I couldn't claim the grant because I couldn't accept the interview call

How will this funding be used?

$600 entirely for one laptop. No courses, no programs, no overhead. Just the tool.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Just me. I am a vocational student in software engineering who also codes, and a theorist who works across neuroscience, computation, philosophy of mind, and whatever else demands thinking about. My ambition is to work as a polymath: connecting domains that do not usually talk to each other.

18+ preprints published on Zenodo and OSF.

ORCID: 0009-0002-1054-3167

One paper was submitted to Consciousness and Cognition (Elsevier Q1) and received substantive feedback from the Editor-in-Chief, not a form rejection, but specific theoretical critique that I am currently working through. That is where the research is: early, serious, and ongoing.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

If unfunded: research continues at current pace on a 2GB RAM phone. Papers will still get written, just slower and with more friction than the ideas deserve.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

$0.