Nipun Mehta, Feb 9, 2025 in Gandhi 3.0, 2025
[Below is a post I recently shared on another forum, but I thought some of you may like to know about it as well. AI's current trajectory is the least imaginative one, trying to automate status quo, save labor and solve yesterday's problems. If innovation, instead, can dance to the rhythm of emergence, we could surprise ourselves. :)]
Several years before ChatGPT came out, we piloted a "Compassion Bot" at a ServiceSpace Retreat in California -- it would help us figure out which media stories were compassionate, beyond responses of sympathy and empathy. We were aware that if you Google "givers", it would list the likes of Gates and Buffet, whereas we were keen also to include the likes of a janitor who collected trashed pencils to pay forward or a Mckinsey consultant who hosted a lemonade stand in New York or a school principal who took up a night job so he could offer scholarships.
Fast forward a few years. Many Silicon Valley innovations emerged, ChatGPT stunned the world, AI industry got valued at trillions, and possibilities exploded. We rode those waves, less for the fascination of AI, but more to add a voice at the table that would drive human connection and evolution. How might we safeguard the sacred, amidst technologies that are powered by extraction below the radar of our awareness? Already, we’ve all seen the wounds left behind by social media, by a dopamine-addicted culture, and by a dismal 8-second attention span – lowest of all species. Can we do better now, turn around that tide?
Many moons ago, Gandhi identified a crucial design shift that would upgrade human progress: multiplication of wants to fulfillment of needs.
Can we imagine building modern tools with that heuristic?
"Multiplication of wants" is a reality already woven into our days – the frantic dance of endless phone refreshes, the dis-intermediation of team sports into prop bets, and the descent into the numbing spiral of doom-scrolling and binge-watching. With each passing innovation, we risk becoming hollowed out, our innate spark diminished, until we resemble what Krishnamurti described as 'imitations of mechanistic computers.' Today, we almost can’t discern between the calculated creativity of a trillion-token AI model and our spontaneous action that emerges as a dance of uncountable eons of evolutionary impulses. Balancing big-data algorithms with deep-data intuition doesn’t even arise as a legitimate inquiry. Some even hesitate to ask, “What can humans do that computers can’t?”
Now, AI promises to deliver us to Consumerism 2.0. Instead of convincing someone with persuasive marketing, just hack their desire-generating factory.
In the 90s, a famous “Robo Rats” experiment manipulated rats with a chip implant. Instead of telling the rats what to do, they manufactured the ‘itch’ that would make them ‘scratch’; they created sensations that rats would react to, and move in specific ways. Rats would solve complex mazes that way. When questioned about the experiment’s ethics, the lead scientist retorted, “It’s enlightenment for the rats. They get to fulfill all their desires.”
Gandhi certainly didn't think that was enlightenment, or even happiness. His radical response wasn't a luddite one, but a more creative one: can we power our innovations without the manipulative logic of multiplying our wants?
Sages of the past would applaud such an inquiry, because they repeatedly warned about the futility of appeasing our desires. Buddha emphatically warned us that one desire begets another; it’s a hamster wheel to exhaustion, confusion, and disconnection. We so often mistake simplicity for a sacrifice, a giving up of something precious. But in truth, it is a blossoming, a radiant celebration of all that awaits us beyond the tangled web of wanting.
Rather than manipulating our confused impulses, can AI assist us in reworking our inner and social operating systems? Could we leverage its efficiency towards fulfilling our basic needs, and re-animate our bodies as an antenna for deep-data wisdom that transcends our senses and thoughts? Could we train AI to help us go from absence to presence, and can our subsequent connections of shared aliveness take us from presence to regeneration? Just as microscopes and telescopes enable us to co-exist in fields beyond our range of awareness, can AI be an inner-scope and “inter-scope” that lifts the veil off our untapped potential?
Certainly, AI can be imagined in a way that keeps sacred at the center. Only catch is that such inquiries can’t be held by architectures of absence, systems of transaction and extraction that subversively propagate the wheels of wants.
What are those architectures of presence that can hold such possibilities? Our collective human heart. That is, the voluntary sector of society.
Broadly speaking, society is split into private, public (government and nonprofit) and voluntary sectors. The private sector excels in narrow margin goals of immediate impact, the public sector excels in broader margin goals of cultivating community, and the voluntary sector invites us to hold more infinite margin goals -- universal values that will be relevant even 10 thousand years from now. One doesn’t need to be a scholar or pundit to know that today’s voluntary sector is crowded out, and the public sector is dominated by private sector influence. Hence, we are systemically optimized for narrow-margin goals: profitability in the next quarter, election in the next term, impact in the next report, news in a 24 hour cycle. Although this has, in various ways, propelled us forward, the mirror of AI now shows us the shadow it casts – the risk of losing not only our way, but our very place in the tapestry of life, potentially writing ourselves out of our own story.
Our collective human heart resides in the voluntary sector. When we perform intrinsically motivated acts, engage in labor of love efforts, and care for each other unconditionally, nature is not only rewarding us with a natural dose of endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, but it is weaving us into a fabric of deeper meaning. This is not to discount the merits of the transactional private sector or the relational public and nonprofit sector, but it also to recognize that the ancient and eternal cannot be substituted.
The human heart longs to be reunited with each other to seed pathways of unpredictable emergence that are borne of those relationships. Yet, in today’s distracted world of absence, holding infinite-margin questions can often be framed as an indulgence – instead of a responsibility. In relating to Dr. King’s “fierce urgency of the now”, we forget his other crucial reminder that the “moral arc of the universe is long”. In a web of zero-sum games and multi-polar crises, it is self-evident that one changemaker’s solution becomes another’s problem. It's a dead-end that compels us to discover a new axis of consciousness.
In this context, can we find innovations that draw a throughline from narrow-margin goals of “fulfillment of needs” to broad-margin goals of cultivating communities of resilience to infinite-margin goals of anchoring in wisdom and compassion?
Enter Awakin AI.
For over two decades, in hundreds of cities across the world, ServiceSpace communities have been hosting Awakin Circles. In ordinary living rooms (and now also online), these circles simply create a space for an an hour of silence, a circle of sharing, and a shared meal – all without an agenda, a brand, price tag, or even a donation box. All voluntary. At its core is the simple notion of “Awa-kin” – awakening with kin. That is, if you join with an intention to move from absence to a bit more presence, and I attempt to do the same, our space of relatedness makes way for new possibilities. That emergence does a whole lot – including finding yourself, feeling related to others, healing yourself and others, etc. – but no one knows who is doing what. My parents hosted these circles every single week for 23 years, feeding well over 50 thousand people in the very house I grew up in. I have seen its quiet impact firsthand, though I could never distill it into a soundbite.
In a world conditioned by transactions, this may seem like magic. But to a farmer, it feels as natural as the soil. Hang Mai, a pioneering permaculture farmer in Vietnam, puts it simply: “In the city, we ask: what to grow here? On a farm, we ask: what grows here?” The difference is subtle, yet profound. When we start from relatedness, it is easy to trust that our coherence will lead to new possibilities. In our brain, none of the neurons are conscious on its own, yet billions together create thought, emotion, and self-awareness.
Perhaps we have been too quick to cut and prune, to divide and measure, to plan and execute the efficiency of fragmented parts. What if, instead of breaking things down, we learned to build things up? What if our tools helped us "search and amplify" the wholeness of collective emergence -- to listen deeply, not just to the notes, and the silence between them, but also to the quiet hum of the universe that aligns the music to the winds of nature.
HOW can AI be designed with these principles?
Awakin AI is an exploration of these questions, weaving together five essential layers: data, intelligence, application, social emergence, and heart intelligence.
At a baseline level, can we create a data-commons movement? Can the subsequent AI models be held in a polyculture field of many-to-many digital intelligences? Can an AI incubator develop applications and agents that can circulate unique patterns of heart intelligence? In the context of peak polarization, can these applications weave social interactions into a new tapestry of emergence? Collectively, can we evolve our consciousness in a way that we’re not “solving problems with the same thinking we used to create them”?
At the foundation lies data—the raw material that informs AI. But what if we built a commons of wisdom, a collective archive that reflects not just human knowledge, but human values? Already, we’ve gathered over 500+ diverse data sets – sacred scriptures of 1700 world religions, teachings of wise elders from Ram Dass to Sharon Salzberg, indigenous oral traditions and even ancient Sanskrit manuscripts that Oxford researchers haven’t yet processed – and allowed everyday people to interact with it in creative ways. Looking ahead, we imagine even bolder possibilities: what if policymakers had access to consciousness data that offered a map of emotional and mental well-being, much like Google Maps helps us navigate physical spaces?
On top of this foundation are AI models – digital intelligences. Traditionally, they have operated in a one-to-many fashion, where a single model serves multiple users. But we are building something different: a many-to-many intelligence network, where learning is collaborative and emergent. What would Aristotle, Masanobu Fukuoka, and Mother Teresa intelligence respond when asked -- What do I do when my job conflicts with my values? How should I think about scale? How do I grow my heart? What if, at a retreat, each small group’s conversation was synthesized by the intelligences of Hellen Keller or Howard Thurman, guiding the next step toward meaningful action?
At the application layer, AI is rapidly evolving beyond chatbots to dynamic AI agents—autonomous systems that process, decide, and act. Today, a Restaurant Agent can learn your dietary preferences, locate the best meal, and ensure it’s delivered to your house by 6PM. Apps already use crime data to suggest safe walking routes. In our ecosystem, we are working on a “Service Agent” that contextually matches volunteers with community needs. In India, we’ve spawned off a new “AI decelerator”, that will work with a dozen unique communities to experiment with unique applications of Agentic AI.
A New Social Operating System: Absence to Presence to Regeneration
The private sector understands these three layers – data, AI models, and applications – intimately. However, when these innovations are embedded in architectures of absence that extract human presence in service of narrow-margin goals, it is no surprise that it overlooks the social fabric and the unintended consequences of its own technologies. For example, Facebook can never be optimized for real-life hugs over virtual emojis. Such algorithmic logic takes us from YouTube’s “you will also like watching” to Netflix’s binge-watching to Roblox’s immersive gaming – and soon, the Meta Verse, where screens become the default reality, and life itself feels like a break from digital consumption. Designers, engineers and leaders of such hollowed-out spaces have no choice but to play defense on vice instead of playing offense on virtue.
But technology can be held by differently. Instead of a Meta-Verse, can we cultivate a Metta-Verse -- an ecosystem of technologies that awakens our compassionate instinct and deposits that into architectures of presence that regenerate it? In other words, can technology create social value and let its ripples self-organize in the voluntary sector, in the larger field of consciousness?
In this time of peak polarization, we need a new social operating system, one that helps us disentangle from our dueling narratives. In two decades of hosting agenda-less Awakin circles, we’ve seen a pattern emerge:
- When absence meets absence, division deepens.
- When absence meets presence, healing begins.
- When presence meets presence, a new field of emergence is born.
What, then, are the AI architectures of presence, regeneration, and emergence?
While we don’t have firm hypotheses yet, we hope to build applications that cultivate micro connections of compassion alongside networks of noble friendships, where “ladders” (not leaders) can ask the question: what grows here?
The Deepest Layer: Heart Intelligence
At its most subtle, and yet most transformative, AI must anchor itself in heart intelligence. When we find coherence within ourselves, it radiates outward—into our relationships, our communities, and even planetary and cosmic scales. Such heart intelligence is not something one person owns; it is a shared field, a living conversation between the ancient and the emergent.
We have seen this in action—at gatherings like the recent Gandhi 3.0, where strangers arrive with open hearts, step beyond self-interest, and in doing so, allow something far greater to take form. It is not magic, yet it feels magical. It is not new, yet it is always new. This kind of transformation cannot be measured, yet its ripples are undeniable. One heart awakens, and that awakening is shared. Another heart stirs, and that too is shared. And so it unfolds—a quiet revolution of the spirit, moving through us, not as an individual triumph, but as a collective blossoming.
What emerges is a force that does not seek power, does not demand recognition. It is a force of gratitude, flowing freely from one to another, until it becomes something luminous, something uncontainable. Perhaps it is love—without conditions, without boundaries, without end. And it is most certainly an intelligence.
That, then, is the invitation before us – to weave heart intelligence into the fabric of AI. Can we design intelligence—not just to compute, but to commune? Can we marry algorithmic optimization with social emergence and spiritual regeneration? Can we build an Awa-kin Intelligence, one that bridges data, AI models, and applications while simultaneously knitting a new social tapestry and awakening a self-sustaining field of heart intelligence? Can we imagine a technology that is not powered by the multiplication of wants, but by a celebration of the universal values that make us come alive?
CONCLUSION
Standing at this unique crossroad in human history, we peer into a world yet unwritten. James P. Carse once mused that a finite game is played to win, but an infinite game is played to keep the play alive. And so, as the architects of the coming Meta Verse sketch its outlines in pursuit of victory, it will take the quiet, steadfast ignition of a Metta Verse – a world woven with loving-kindness – to remind us of the joy found in simply being, in dancing with the mystery of life.
To walk the tightrope between the known and the unimagined is no easy feat. To tether AI to HI —Heart Intelligence— is to summon forth a new lineage of visionaries, brave enough to step beyond the shores of certainty and into the open sea of emergence. Yet, hope shimmers in the spaces between us. Just as a starling in flight follows only seven others, yet somehow thousands move in graceful unity, we too may find our way—not through force, but through a deeper listening, a silent knowing, a collective heart intelligence (CHI) that beats in synchrony with the song of the universe.
And yes, perhaps we will falter. Perhaps AI will rush ahead, untethered from wisdom, reshaping our world faster than we can weave the threads of meaning back together. Perhaps human connection will fray at the edges, as it has before, leaving behind only echoes of the intimacy we once cherished. Or maybe we stand not on the brink of despair, but at the threshold of something wondrous – an evolution of our consciousness and what it means to be alive.
What we know, what we hold deep in our bones, is this: come what may, we will show up. As Shantideva once whispered across centuries, “For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then, may I too abide to [alleviate some suffering] in the world.” With open hearts and willing hands, we offer presence to an infinite game.