The Most Profound Insights from the Best Event I've Been to in Years

On Monday night, I went to an event titled “Can AI Heal Us.” It was an intimate, purple-lit, circular-seating space with buzzing energy from a diverse crowd. In spite of the rain, every seat was filled.?

It was different from most AI events.?

We grounded ourselves, not once, but three times during the evening. We didn’t talk about efficiency gains - we talked about humanity.?

At the end, a duo of 16 year olds with rockstar-energy played the violin and cello. One told us to remember that music is life and we cannot replace it.

If AI makes you feel overwhelmed, scared, uncertain, or just curious, read these insights. It gave me a new perspective (and even some hope).

Will AI change us?

• A story: These writers had a ritual of going into a barn for 3 days to hash out a script. Afterwards, they gave the prompt to ChatGPT. It wrote the same script.
• Why are we surprised by AI’s creativity? It's building on our collective genius.
• Are AI’s instant answers impacting our values? Destination over journey. What about the value of the process?
• A filmmaker in the audience: “I’m not afraid of losing my paycheck, I’m afraid of losing my purpose.”

Why do we fear AI?

• We fear that we have no more energy to cope or adapt.
• We feel inadequate. Not creative enough, not fast enough. Is everything we build obsolete instantly?
• What happens when AI is trained on AI content? Will it become an indecipherable maze of hallucinations?
• We fear AI is going to perpetuate existing systems of power. Faster, smarter algorithms will influence us to buy more, and waste more. A smaller minority will benefit, while everyone else will be doing…what?

Can AI heal us?

• We believe we have created something more powerful than us. We used to turn to God, so now we turn to AI. But can AI be more powerful than us if we created it??
• We need to remember how powerful we are. AI only has access to fragments of us. What about embodied experience, somatic healing, spiritual growth, plant medicine, human connection?
• This is the initiation phase of a new religion - an era of getting ripped apart. Does it have to be that way??

What will AI cost us?

• While many AI tools are free, they are not “free.” We are paying with our data and our resources.?
• Rare earth minerals are being mined in Africa to enable our tech. Blood diamonds are now blood devices.
• For every 15 minutes that we chat, half a liter of water is cooling GPT’s servers. We’re draining aquifers that take 15,000 years to replenish.
• We have a hard time making hard calls. When will we outsource life and death decisions? What will happen to our humanity then??

Is there hope?

• We need to move past our nostalgia hole, our "age of average." This is the push we need. To stand out now, creators will need to be atypical and unconventional.
• The democratization of GenAI tools is an opportunity for participation.
• We have what we need to fix our problems. Perhaps we need this common enemy to rally us together.
• Or maybe, with the right training data, AI can help us become better humans.

These notes are an editorial version of comments from the brilliant panelists, hosts, and audience. I encourage you to follow them for more of their work:

• Dr. Angel Acosta, chair, Acosta Institute; director of the Garrison Institute's Fellowship Program; creative Director, NYC Healing Collective
• Tim Leberecht, co-founder and co-CEO, House of Beautiful Business; author, The Business Romantic
• Dr. Sará King, neuroscientist, political and learning scientist, medical anthropologist, social entrepreneur
• Matt Klein, cultural theorist, digital anthropologist, author of ZINE
• Susanna Raj, founder & CEO of AI4Nomads, cognitive science and AI ethics researcher