Dear Service Fellows,

Since our first call 10 days ago, a lot has been brewing.

Below, I'll share more about various innovative bots we've piloted. Putting aside the hyperbole around AI (temporarily :)), think of this as a far more effective way to do Google search. Instead of wading through lots of keyword matches, the bots can help (imperfectly) synthesize massive amount of interconnections in the data and provide a rich interactive interface to engage with the content. 

Next question emerged -- can we have each Service Fellow create its own ServiceSpace bot? It turns out we can. :) If you'd like to give it a whirl, RSVP for a call with Manu next Thursday. Your experimenting will actually be quite helpful for our collective field, as we navigate these unchartered territories. 

Few updates -- optimizing our tech, our responses are a ton faster now! No more mindfulness breaks in between queries. :) We've added data privacy options for all users, and for bot owners, we've added a ton of new features -- to manage their bots on their own!  We also have pilot versions of four new bots ...

• SharonBot -- as a reputed thought leader, Sharon Salzberg has offered us practically the entirety of her life's teachings, navigating multiple copyright holders and more. We're adding it to the model as we speak, and it promises to be a great case study for other teachers (and our 500+ speaker community of Awakin Call speakers!).
  
  
• VinobaGPT -- as Gandhi's successor in India, this is a great example of a historical person. Some of Rohit's questions to it: "Mckinsey style 3 bullet points of his life wisdom, isn't becoming a 'servant' demeaning, his life in a poem, a joke, views on scale, on money -- and it continues to impress. And one of my favourites -- is there any selfless act if we feel good in giving?" Oh, and what do you think about Gandhi? :) Pushing bounds here -- can we scan one of his books in Hindi, and auto-translate that (like we do with our Pod content) and add it to the model?
  
  
• BowingBot -- this is in its early stages, but it has read all of Rev. Heng Sure's bowing pilgrimage journals and letters. From how it was like to bow in Beverly Hills to the difference between Boddhisattva/Arhant path to the essence of the compassion sutra, it held a fair amount of nuance! Lot of his content is in video form, and we've build some new apps that allow us to add videos to his model. This will be huge for all future content down the road.
  
  
• GreaterGoodBot -- as one of the more influential organizations in the "pro social" space, GGSC is excited about the possibility of their users going from a long list of Google keyword matches, to an interface with human language! Still, the context matters a lot and on our call with them, we articulated 12 core differences between our ethos and the market logic.

As we navigate all the mischief here, we also had a generative conversation with the folks running Google Bard. They have given us backstage passes, to try some truly pioneering stuff. More on that coming soon. :)

With smiles, :)

Nipun