About

I am Octavian M. Machidon, a computer scientist and scholar of artificial intelligence working at the intersection of AI systems, ethics, human formation and the philosophy and theology of technology.

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, and a member of the University's Centre for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence and the Ethics of New Technologies. From October 2026 I will also be a John Paul II Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas — the Angelicum — in Rome, where my work focuses on artificial companionship, agentic AI and the crisis of human relation.

My technical research grew out of embedded and reconfigurable computing and now includes adaptive and resource-efficient AI, mobile and edge intelligence, context-aware systems, federated learning, digital health, remote sensing and on-device machine learning. I am interested in systems that respond intelligently to changing conditions while remaining efficient, controllable and deployable outside the laboratory.

Alongside this technical work, I study what increasingly capable and pervasive AI systems do to human agency, moral judgment, cognition, education, relationships, spiritual life and dignity. My recent research examines moral alignment in large language models, cognitive and intellectual deskilling, artificial companionship, recommender systems, human control over advanced AI, and the ways digital technologies shape persons rather than merely serve them.

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” — Fr. John Culkin

All projects
2026–2027

Moral Red Lines — Catholic Moral Discernment and Red Lines in the Race Toward AGI

Principal Investigator · Future of Life Institute Religions Initiative Grant

Featured / current. An international research and engagement initiative developing morally grounded red lines for advanced AI. The project integrates technical AI analysis with Catholic moral thought and theological anthropology, focusing on meaningful human control, moral agency, human dignity, work, relationships and responsibilities that must not be delegated to machines. Upcoming project events: Brussels / COMECE Commission of Ethics — Expert consultation, 16 November 2026; Superintelligence, Work, and Human Relationships — Expert workshop, 26–27 November 2026.
Project website ↗
COMECE Commission of Ethics — Expert consultationBrussels, Belgium · European-facing expert and policy dialogue on moral red lines for advanced AI.
Superintelligence, Work, and Human Relationships — Expert workshopRome, Italy · International expert workshop advancing the project’s theological, ethical and policy dialogue.
2025–ongoing

LLM Ethical Value Alignment

Research group leader

Current. Investigating LLM value-alignment training and benchmarking techniques. Building a human-annotated ethical benchmark for LLM value alignment: approximately 10,000 instructions across commonsense moral reasoning, deontology, justice, utilitarianism and virtue ethics, independently annotated by three annotators and prepared for open release through CLARIN.SI.
2025–2027

J6-60105 — Theology and Digitalization: Anthropological and Ethical Challenges

Institutional Principal Investigator for UL FRI · Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency

Current. Interdisciplinary research across theology, philosophy, ethics, psychology and computer science on how digitalization and AI reshape identity, embodiment, empathy, vulnerability, spirituality, relationality and moral agency. The project develops an ethical and theological anthropology for the digital age and practical guidance for human-centred technology.
Expected late 2026–2028

EQUAL-AI — STEM Skills for Inclusive & Industrial AI Adoption

Institutional Principal Investigator for UL FRI

Upcoming. EQUAL-AI proposes a European network of STEM Skills Foundries linking higher education, VET, industry, innovation infrastructure and entrepreneurship.

Research Interests

Research overview

AI, Moral Alignment & Human Agency

I study whether AI alignment can be evaluated only through agreement with human preferences and judgments, or whether it also requires attention to the moral grounds and principles behind those judgments. Current work examines rationale-level moral alignment in large language models and the boundary between legitimate AI assistance and the delegation of non-transferable human responsibility.

Human Dignity & Moral Red Lines for Advanced AI

What kinds of AI development or deployment should not be pursued even when they are technically feasible? Through the Moral Red Lines project, I connect technical analysis of frontier systems with ethical and theological accounts of dignity, agency, work, responsibility, relationship and the common good.

AI, Cognition, Education & Human Formation

Generative AI can improve immediate task performance while changing how people learn to think, remember, create and judge. I study the emerging evidence around cognitive offloading and intellectual deskilling, with particular attention to children, students and educational design that uses AI without surrendering the formation of independent capacities.

Relational AI & Artificial Companionship

As conversational systems become companions, confidants and increasingly agentic partners, the central question is no longer only whether machines can simulate social intelligence. I examine how frictionless and asymmetrical artificial relationships may reshape human expectations of reciprocity, vulnerability, responsibility and genuine encounter.

Adaptive, Edge & Privacy-Preserving AI

My technical work develops intelligent systems that adapt to context and resource constraints at runtime. This includes dynamic neural-network adaptation, efficient mobile inference, approximate computing, on-device learning and federated learning, with an emphasis on real-world deployment and meaningful system-level evaluation.

Selected Publications

Full bibliography
  1. 2026
  2. 2026
  3. 2026

    Agreement Is Not Alignment: Divergent Moral Grounds in Human and LLM Ethical Judgments

    Octavian M. Machidon, Alina L. Machidon, Vojko Strahovnik, Mateja Centa Strahovnik, Jonas Miklavčič, Marko Robnik Šikonja

    arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.12368

  4. 2026

    A Scoping Review of the Negative Effects of Digital Technology on Cognition

    Urška Žnidarič, Erik Štrumbelj, Octavian M. Machidon

    arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.10025

  5. 2025
  6. 2025

Upcoming Talks & Events

All talks
Portorož Youth Health Forum 2026Portorož, Slovenia · Invited expert
ECHT DABEI · Jubiläum Fachtagung gesund & medienfitFreiburg im Breisgau, Germany · Invited speaker & workshop leader
HERMMES Ambassador TrainingOnline · Zagreb · Prague · Invited lecturer
Moral Red Lines — COMECE Commission of Ethics — Expert consultationBrussels, Belgium · Organizer / Principal Investigator
Moral Red Lines — Superintelligence, Work, and Human Relationships — Expert workshopRome, Italy · Organizer / Principal Investigator

Latest

Organizing the COMECE Commission of Ethics expert consultation for Moral Red Lines on 16 November, followed by the Superintelligence, Work, and Human Relationships expert workshop on 26–27 November.

Upcoming invited engagements: Portorož Youth Health Forum, ECHT DABEI anniversary conference in Freiburg, and the HERMMES Ambassador Training programme.

Published Large Language Models for OCR in Cultural Heritage: A Comparative Study on Slovene Folkloristic Texts in the International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition.

Published Love as Moral Telos: A Love-Based Ethical Framework for Artificial Intelligence in the Journal of Media Ethics.

CARDIO-FL research published in Frontiers in Digital Health: privacy-preserving adaptive arrhythmia monitoring with wearable ECG, smartphone PPG and federated on-device learning.

Published Forgetting how to say “Thou”: artificial intelligence and the crisis of relation in AI and Ethics.