About
Outsider builders. AI ethics. Technology for the human person.
Hi. My name is Jonas Leddington. After many years on the human and strategy side of private equity, I now build software and work on the ethics of building with and living with AI.
My work concerns how we shape our lives and give them meaning and force, how we interact with others, and how we are shaped by technology and systems. I think the hardest problems in our society and businesses are not technological, but concern behavior and relationships.
I aim to build technology that’s useful and gets out of the way. Too many offerings are a quiet tax on our days. My builds avoid engagement tricks, ads, data monetization, or anything else that extracts from users. I also seek to avoid lock-in with any single vendor. Local software has a long history and I’m just taking my first steps. I worry about centralized control and accelerating disparities in wealth and access. Can we harness AI to serve the individual and the common good?
I write on all this at Building with AI.
At Self and Society, I also write on Zen, religion, formation, society and the common good, practices of mind and body, and performance.
You can subscribe to both or either one separately.
If you’re interested in practical short pieces on Zen or athletic/fighter mind training and ethics, see A School of the Way.
Practice
I’ve trained in Zen and related spiritual and mental disciplines for over 20 years, including several years living in monasteries, and I’m now a vowed novice in the Japanese Sōtō Zen tradition, ordained at Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community, where I train with Joshin Byrnes. At Bread Loaf, we practice accompaniment and provide transitional housing. Everything and everyone is included and welcomed, beyond our preferences. I’m also a member of the Parish of the Holy Eucharist here in Cumberland County.
I studied Humanities at the University of Chicago and media, art history, and critical theory at the PhD program in Visual Studies at UC Irvine. I also took courses in Religion and Peace at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and theology at St. Joseph’s in Maine. A long time ago, I was a national-class competitive cyclist and rower, and spent my 30s in boxing gyms in San Francisco and Oakland. I’m 50 now and training BJJ. I also take photographs, read too many items at once, ride motorcycles, and love the winter.
After two decades in SF and NY, I live in Maine with my wife, Jessica, and my dog, Monk.
About this site
Hand-built with my collaborator, Claude Code, static, and plain. No analytics, no trackers, no cookies, and no third-party anything — the typefaces are served from this domain rather than from Google, and there are no embeds. Nothing here watches you read.