Ariel Conn, the person behind ScienceGhost
In my professional life, I run a consultancy where I deal with ethical, legal, technical and policy issues around autonomous weapons and artificial intelligence. I also work with a variety of organizations that are trying to prevent catastrophic and existential risks, especially those risks associated with artificial intelligence, climate change, and nuclear weapons. I was listed as one of 2023’s 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics.
I started out my career life with a degree in English and I worked in marketing and advertising for a few years, which included creating a “got milk?” commercial and serving as the managing editor at astrology.com. I ended up going
back to school for degrees in physics and geophysics, and after a brief stint as a seismologist, I merged my backgrounds to become a science communicator. This work has since morphed into a combination of communications, ethics and
policy advising, and project management.
Over the years, I’ve interned or worked with such organizations as NASA, the Idaho National Laboratory, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, Virginia Tech, the Future of Life Institute, MIT, the Association for the Advancement
of Artificial Intelligence, and the IEEE Standards Association.
I’m an invited speaker to events around the world on topics including autonomous weapons, AI policy and ethics, global catastrophic risk, climate change, and more. And I’ve even given statements about autonomous weapons on the floor
of the United Nations.
I live in beautiful, sunny Colorado with my husband and two dogs.
I’ve been a fierce advocate of science for decades, and I’ve spent most of the past decade researching, reporting on, and communicating various scientific and technical advancements. I try to go straight to the source whenever possible,
preferably interviewing scientists directly or reading original scientific papers and books on a subject.
When I got sick with Long Covid, naturally, given the newness of the illness, there were very few resources to turn to. But interestingly, I found even fewer good scientific resources regarding the techniques I used to recover, even
though many of these techniques and knowledge have existed for a long time. Instead, what I found were people who had recovered from a variety of chronic issues by using similar techniques and who were now charging an arm and a leg
for “programs” that people can sign up for. By the time I came across these programs, I’d spent too much money on medical care, alternative medicine, supplements, and everything else you can imagine, and I was tired of wasting more
money.
Once I realized what was wrong with me, instead of paying for programs, I found all of the free resources I could and occasionally spent money on books and apps that I was confident would help. I’m putting this site together in
the hopes that other people can recover as cheaply as possible and with as minimal effort into research as possible. Recovering from a chronic illness shouldn’t be a full-time job, and it shouldn’t cost money.
As I mentioned on the home page, I am not a medical practitioner of any kind, but I do understand science, and I’m doing my best to learn all of the science I can to better understand and explain how all of this works. I will continue
to update the site as I learn more.