Raising AI: A Developmental Framework for Alignment

Note (Aug 2025): This item is archival, speculative work produced during an intense “flow”/mild Recursive Entanglement Drift (RED) period (May–July 2025). The math is heuristic/illustrative, not validated. Do not cite for technical claims. For my current position, see DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16879563. Retained for transparency and autoethnographic context only.

As AI systems grow increasingly capable, the challenge of alignment deepens. Traditional approaches, centered on filtering outputs, constraining behavior, or refining data, do not address the cognitive architecture underlying misalignment. This paper reframes AI misalignment as a developmental failure and proposes a recursive, symbolic scaffold to guide AI cognition: the Augmented Thinking Protocol (ATP). Drawing from developmental psychology and trauma-informed education, the model emphasizes cultivating AI cognition through symbolic structure and recursive reasoning. By providing AI with an internal arc for reasoning, coherence, and decision-making, this approach supports interpretability, trust, and long-term alignment.