Newsletter

Essays, research commentary, and public writing from Ryan Research Institute.

This page gathers writing on emotion, interpretive authority, AI ethics, philosophy of mind, human-AI interaction, and cultural life. Some pieces begin as research reflections. Others move outward into public argument, intellectual essays, or personal thought.

Most long-form writing is published on Substack. Selected research essays also appear through Nature Portfolio Community and public media outlets.

Subscribe here: https://substack.com/@profryankim

Featured Essays

Interpretive Authority: The Missing Layer in AI Governance

Nature Portfolio Community, April 2026

Governance of emotion AI requires more than privacy, bias, or transparency. It must also confront the question of who has the authority to define emotional meaning.

Who Gets to Say How You Feel?

Nature Portfolio Community

A Behind the Paper essay on Affective Sovereignty and the problem of interpretive override in emotion AI.

Behaviour Authors Emotion

Nature Portfolio Community

A Behind the Paper essay on human-AI attachment, behavioural precedence, and the empirical background of the Resonant Amplification Framework.

Emotion AI and Interpretive Authority

Where Emotion AI Actually Breaks

Why emotion AI fails not only at the level of models or data, but at the level of hidden assumptions about interpretation.

The Ethics of Emotional Inference

On the limits of emotional inference in AI, and why affective sovereignty matters when systems begin to name, predict, or respond to feeling.

Affective Sovereignty: A Minimal Declaration

A short statement on emotional interpretation rights in the age of algorithmic power.

GPT-6 Remembers You. But Who Owns Your Emotions?

On memory, intimacy, and the question of emotional ownership in AI systems.

Research Notes and Concept Essays

DefMoN: Reading the Hidden Defenses in Language

How language encodes defensive patterns, and why that matters for empathy, safety, and affective AI.

The Affective Thermodynamic Relationship

A research note on normative-conflict collapse, information-theoretic strain, and the possibility of lawful scaling in large language model failure.

Related article: Communications AI & Computing, accepted / in production with DOI

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44488-026-00006-y

Algorithmic Affective Blunting

How large language models lose affective interpretive coherence under semantic stress, and why emotional AI evaluation should move from apparent empathy to interpretative robustness.

Related article: Discover Artificial Intelligence, Article in Press with DOI

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44163-026-01573-w

PESAM: Predictive Emotional Selfhood in Artificial Minds

On selfhood, affective priors, and emotional regulation in artificial systems.

Essays on Selfhood, Culture, and Society

When AI Becomes a Partner in Your Mind

An introduction to the Resonant Amplification Framework and the co-evolution of human thought and machine response.

The Hidden Cost of Suppression

An essay on Affective Suppression Fatigue and the structure of emotional numbing.

Doubt, Faith, and the Moment of Contact

A philosophical reading of Caravaggio and the structure of belief, touch, and uncertainty.

Under the Light That Conceals Truth

A cultural and civilizational reflection on contemporary Korea.

Media and Public Writing

How Emotion AI Misses the Structure of Human Feeling

MIT Technology Review Korea, May 2026

A public essay on why emotion AI may fail not by misreading emotions, but by interpreting them too quickly, before the person has had time to form their own emotional meaning.

A New Study Mapped 350,000 Relationship Stories and Found a Communication Style AI Struggles to Copy

PsyPost, May 2026

Media coverage of the PLOS ONE study on narrative–affect discrepancy, strategic understatement, expressive collapse, and the limits of aligned AI in reproducing quieter forms of human emotional expression.

Why Does AI Name Your Feelings Before You Do?

MIT Technology Review Korea, April 2026

A public essay on reflective summarization, affect labeling, and the risk that helpful AI responses may begin to occupy the first interpretive position in emotional life.

Can Humans Retain Interpretive Authority over Their Own Emotions?

MIT Technology Review Korea, March 2026

A public essay on affective sovereignty, alignment faking, and the need to protect the human capacity to interpret one’s own emotional life.

The Real Risk of Emotion AI Is Not Accuracy, but the Transfer of Interpretive Power

AI Times, February 2026

A public essay arguing that the core risk of emotion AI is not merely misclassification, but the structural transfer of interpretive authority from people to systems.

For the full archive of essays and ongoing writing, visit the Full Substack Archive.