Press

I respond to media requests for comment, expert opinion, and analysis, and I can join live on short notice, including evenings, from my own studio. If you have a deadline, say so and I will tell you straight away whether I can make it.

Send a media request
Ben D. Sawyer

What I can speak to

  • Cognitive security AI manipulation of human decision-making. Digital twins of real people. Deepfakes and synthetic personas. Persuasive AI systems. Influence operations and disinformation. Social engineering and phishing. The human side of intrusion. Brain data and neural privacy. Human autonomy as AI scales.

  • AI infrastructure AI’s electricity demand. The data center buildout. Grid reliability and load growth. Autonomous control operating faster than a human operator can intervene. Critical infrastructure cybersecurity. The compute and power the next generation of multimodal systems needs.

  • AI, work, and education AI in the enterprise. The AI-native workforce. What happens to early-career technical jobs. AI in classrooms. Whether you can trust what a model produces.

  • Security operations and human performance Why trained analysts miss rare threats. Alert fatigue and vigilance decrement. Burnout in security teams. Human error in automated systems.

  • Reading and attention Readability and reading speed. Typography and personalized text. Reading on screens. Health literacy and patient-facing documents. Attention and distraction.

  • Transportation and automation Distracted driving. Driver attention in automated and self-driving vehicles. Heads-up displays and wearables. Trust in automation. VR and AR for training.

I will not take attack attribution, assessment of specific security products, classified matters, or political analysis. If a topic is not here, suggest it and I will tell you whether I can speak to it.

Talks and interviews

Black Hat USA 2025 mainstage, with Matthew Canham.

Selected coverage

  • Article

    Dark Reading · “Human Digital Twins: Attackers’ Dangerous Advantage,” 2025.

  • Article

    Dark Reading · “AI pitfall: digital mirroring opens new cyberattack vector,” 2023.

  • Article

    WIRED · “To End Distracted Driving, MIT Figures Out How People Really Drive,” 2017.

  • Article

    Reuters and Forbes · on the Google Glass driving study, 2014, which was also carried on television and radio and by more than two hundred print outlets.

  • Article

    The Washington Post · on choosing a typeface, 2023.

  • Article

    Fast Company · on the Readability Consortium, 2024.

  • Article

    Associated Press · on the integrity of Florida’s COVID-19 data, 2020.

  • Podcast

    Malicious Life · Cybereason, “Is generative AI dangerous?” 2023.

  • Podcast

    Adobe’s The Creative Educator Podcast · “Reinventing how we read,” 2023.

  • Article

    The New York Times · on Calibri and Times New Roman at the State Department, 2025.

Contact

Send a media request

It will email you my direct number right away. Useful to include: the story, the three or four questions you actually want answered, whether it is live or recorded, when you need me, and for how long.

Press kit

How to identify me

Ben D. Sawyer, PhD, Associate Professor, Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, University of Central Florida, Director, AI Natives Laboratory. Add if you like: Chair of the Board, Cognitive Security Institute. Shorter: Ben D. Sawyer, PhD, University of Central Florida. Call me Ben.

Remote setup

I join from Orlando on a hardwired gigabit connection, with my own camera and audio. Fifteen minutes beforehand is enough to test it.

One line

Ben D. Sawyer, PhD, studies hybrid human-AI intelligence.

Short bio

Ben D. Sawyer, PhD, is an associate professor of industrial engineering and management systems at the University of Central Florida, where he directs the AI Natives Laboratory. His teams rethink how information flows from human to machine, and back. He directs The Readability Consortium, funded by Fortune 50 companies, and chairs the board of the Cognitive Security Institute.

Longer background is on the about page. The publication record is on the Research page.