What this site is
Dennishollarn.com is a personal site exploring AI safety, research, and practical tools — alongside investing and reflections on a 30-year career in technology, from token-ring networks in 1992 to mechanistic interpretability research in 2026.
It is a place to slow down, think clearly, and resist the panic-or-cheerleading binary that dominates most coverage of artificial intelligence.
Why it exists
The pace of the AI revolution is accelerating faster than most people can comfortably track. The benefits — economic, informational, and political — are flowing primarily to academics, PhD-level researchers, the venture capital ecosystem, and a small number of billionaires. Everyone else is largely watching from the sidelines.
This site is built on the belief that ordinary people deserve a voice in how this technology gets built, governed, and brought into our lives. Not as opponents of AI. Not as cheerleaders. As citizens.
Who’s behind it
Dennis Hollarn II. Sixty years old, based in Erie, Pennsylvania. Penn State MIS, Cum Laude, 1992. Three decades in enterprise networking, including fifteen years at Erie Insurance. Father of three adult children. Currently completing AI training with Anthropic and the Tony Robbins AI Advantage program.
In 1995, three years out of college, I asked Bill Gates a question that was syndicated across 17 newspapers in five countries on four continents and entered as Exhibit 333 in the U.S. v. Microsoft antitrust case. I have been thinking about that question for thirty years. This site is the long answer.
Read the full 1995 story →
Full bio with career, mentors, and references →
What you’ll find here
- Past Weekly Reflections — One quote, one brief commentary, posted each week. The goal is a single calming, useful thought.
- AI Safety — Including the recent Vatican encyclical on AI, Anthropic’s Chris Olah speaking alongside Pope Leo XIV, and a plain-English summary of Magnifica Humanitas.
- AI Research — What is happening at the technical frontier beyond the LLM headlines. Why some of the field’s most influential researchers think we need different approaches.
- AI Toolkit — Practical guides for actually using these tools: how LLMs really work, voice-to-text as a productivity skill, sample Claude preferences, and resources I’ve actually found useful.
- AI in Law — How the legal profession is wrestling with AI. Practice, policy, education. New series, more pieces coming.
- AI Regulation — Government’s regulatory response to AI, and how it affects businesses, workers, and everyday citizens. Hearings, legislation, the policy decisions shaping how AI is built and deployed.
- AI and Human Impact — How AI is reshaping the lived experience of working people. Jobs, cognition, family, dignity. Featured analysis and voices worth following.
- Investing — Personal finance and markets in the AI age. Working draft.
What you can do
If something here resonates, take one concrete action this week. Subscribe to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s free Action Center alerts. Look up your Congressional representative. Read one major AI policy document. Leave a thoughtful comment on a reflection.
The decisions being made right now will shape the next thirty years. They will not be made well unless more of us show up.