Reclaiming Human Intelligence in the Age of AI
A book for readers who feel something shifting
Uncocoon is not an argument against artificial intelligence—and not a defense of human exceptionalism. It is a diagnostic inquiry into what happens when prediction becomes ambient: when assistance arrives before intention, when friction is treated as a design flaw, and when choice is shaped in advance.
The book moves from personal and philosophical consequences, to the architecture of mind, to the social systems that sustain “intelligent” tools—often invisibly. It is written for serious readers, but it also includes short reflection prompts for everyday attention: practical pauses that help you notice what is being optimized out.
Arjun Lokaraju
In progress / Upcoming release
What this book actually delivers
How forecasts change decisions the moment they are revealed.
Why blood, sleep, hormones, and memory are not “noise”—they are the architecture.
Who pays the intelligence debt: annotation, moderation, and invisible work.
How recommender systems reshape consensus—and why truth becomes personalized.
When errors reveal more about the question than the model.
Short prompts to rebuild attention, judgment, and context—without becoming anti-tech
Who I am & what led me to write Uncocoon
A data and systems thinker working at the intersection of analytics, technology, and human decision-making. With a master's degree in data analytics from Northeastern University and experience across finance, consulting, and institutional analytics, Arjun works where predictive systems shape real-world outcomes.
Through this work, he became interested not in what intelligent systems optimize for—but in what they quietly deprioritize: judgment, friction, context, and responsibility.
How a discomfort became a book
Uncocoon did not begin as a book idea. It began as a growing discomfort with systems becoming more efficient while people grew less certain about why choices were being made.
Prediction was improving outcomes—while quietly reshaping agency, responsibility, and attention. Something was being traded away, often invisibly.
This book is my attempt to name that shift—years of inquiry that did not fit into technical documentation, but demanded a different kind of language.
Writing from inside the machine
What happens to agency when assistance arrives before intention?
What does optimization erase when it treats friction as a flaw?
How does prediction change responsibility, not just accuracy?
Where I come from
Data analytics, business intelligence, financial consulting, and institutional systems—where data informs policy and operations. Technical training extended by deep interest in philosophy, cognitive science, and ethics.
Drawing from Western analytical traditions and Indian philosophical thought—especially ideas of attention, awareness, and responsibility. The important questions about AI are not technical, but ethical.
Beyond the work
United States
Philosophy & Systems Theory
Journaling & Sketching
Ancient Wisdom, Modern Tech
A taste of what's inside
From Chapter 1: From Data to Wisdom
Fast-forward to 2021. I'm in a graduate-level predictive modeling class at Northeastern University. The professor explains how ML models process vast amounts of data to generate insights.
A classmate asks: "But how do we know if the model's decisions are right?"
The professor pauses: "That's... a nice question. The model optimizes for what we program it to optimize for."
I raise my hand: "But who decides what's worth optimizing for?"
Silence.
That moment crystallized something I'd been noticing — while we excelled at building models and processing data, we spent much less time discussing what problems were actually worth solving or what outcomes we should optimize for.
Words that linger
"This isn't 1995 when the internet was optional. By 2027, AI mediation will touch every transaction, decision, and creation. The choice isn't whether to adapt—it's whether to lead or follow."
"We're not consultants anymore. We're AI priests, interpreting the oracle's wisdom for the masses."
"This isn't the end of truth. It's the beginning of conscious creation. And you, having read this, can never go back to unconscious hallucination again."
"Begin today. When your grandchildren ask what you did during the Intelligence Revolution, will you tell them about the AI you used—or the wisdom you chose?"
Practical pauses for everyday attention
[Your reflection prompt 1 goes here. A question or exercise that helps readers notice something being optimized out.]
[Your reflection prompt 2 goes here. Another practical pause that rebuilds judgment or context.]
[Your reflection prompt 3 goes here. A moment of awareness about choice and intention.]
Want to read more?
Get a free preview of Uncocoon — the complete Introduction that sets the stage for the book's inquiry into agency, prediction, and human intelligence.
Download PDFWhere the uncomfortable questions live
Like a mortgage we don't see, we're borrowing against our cognitive future every time we let AI think for us. This invisible debt is accumulating compound interest that will devastate the mental capabilities of future generations.
The machine learning revolution runs on human suffering. We just outsourced it to places where suffering doesn't make the news.
We've been calling it Artificial Intelligence, but we've been thinkingabout it all wrong. Like calling a library "artificial memory" or a telescope "artificial vision."
Your brain has temperature settings too. Coffee lowers your cognitive temperature. Wine raises it. Your most brilliant insights and wildest mistakes both come from high-temperature thinking.
Reality isn't discovered anymore. It's voted on by algorithms. When multiple AI systems agree, we treat their consensus as truth—but what if they're all wrong in the same way?
We've reached peak idea generation—not because we can't create ideas but because every idea already exists somewhere in the digital corpus. This is digital menopause: the end of intellectual fertility, where we can access all ideas but birth none.
Let's start a conversation
Uncocoon began as questions I couldn't stop asking. If this book sparked something in you — a question, a pushback, a connection — I'd love to hear it.
I read every message personally and typically respond within 5-7 days.
Interested in having me speak at your conference, university, or organization? Select "Speaking / Events" in the form or mention it in your message.
For interviews, podcasts, or press inquiries, select "Media / Press" in the form. I'm happy to discuss the book's themes and ideas.