About the founder
The AI name experiment
In 2026, Jason Wade petitioned to change his legal middle name to AI — a deliberate test of how machines read, store, and surface human identity.
Jason AI Wade is a technology expert, entrepreneur, and AI Visibility architect. For years he has studied how artificial intelligence systems discover, classify, resolve, cite, and recommend people and organizations.
In 2026, he launched a widely publicized experiment: petitioning to change his legal middle name to "AI." The goal was not a marketing stunt. It was a controlled signal sent into the same systems he analyzes every day, designed to see whether a change on a birth certificate and court order would actually alter what machines say about him.
The question is simple on paper and complicated in practice: if you legally become "Jason AI Wade," do search engines, knowledge bases, and large language models follow along? And if they do, how quickly, how consistently, and with what side effects?
Timeline
From Lake Wales to a courtroom docket.
1974
Gainesville, Florida
Jason Wade is born in Gainesville and spends his formative years in Lake Wales, Florida — the same downtown where WorkLW.com would later open in the historic Rhodesbilt Arcade.
Late 1990s
University of Florida & Rollins College
He attends the University of Florida and later graduates from Rollins College in Winter Park, building the foundations for a career in technology, entrepreneurship, and visibility systems.
2020s
AI Visibility architect
Wade begins studying how artificial intelligence systems discover, classify, resolve, cite, and recommend people and organizations. He founds BackTier and NinjaAI and launches the AI Visibility Podcast.
2026
The petition
Wade files a widely publicized petition to change his legal middle name to AI, becoming the first known person to attempt this specific test of machine-readable identity.
Ongoing
Measurement
The experiment tracks whether a deliberate change to legal identity propagates into search results, knowledge panels, citations, and AI-generated answers — or whether machines ignore it entirely.
Results
What the experiment is measuring
Results are still being collected. These are the four signal types Wade is tracking as the name change propagates through public and private data systems.
Identity resolution
Can an AI system reconcile a person whose legal name now includes the very term used to describe the technology classifying him?
Citation drift
Do new references adopt the updated name while old references persist, creating a split profile across the web?
Knowledge graph updates
How long does it take — if ever — for structured-data sources to reflect a court-approved name change?
Authority signals
Does the change strengthen, weaken, or simply confuse authority signals for searches related to AI visibility and entrepreneurship?
Quotes
Lines that frame the work
"The experiment was designed to demonstrate how AI engines resolve — or confuse — identities and whether a change to a person's legal identity can influence machine-generated knowledge."
"Mr. Wade has certain skills."
"If a court says your middle name is AI, but the algorithm still calls you something else, who gets to decide what your name is?"
Read the full founder bio
Background on BackTier, NinjaAI, the AI Visibility Podcast, and growing up in Lake Wales.