Our Research
Table of Contents
Our Research Agenda
To pursue our WHY, we developed a broad research agenda and, at its heart, achieving wisdom-fostering AI by combining technological and human process development.
The central question of this 4D inquiry complex is how AI can be deliberately designed to support individual and collective development and flourishing. The structured set of questions that drives our research agenda requires a transdisciplinary approach, drawing from diverse fields of study such as philosophy, computer science, and sociology.
The central question of the inquiry complex mentioned above is our North Star. Its highest value to our multiple stakeholders can manifest only when appropriate support will enable transdimensional mutual learning across the research areas. What is common among them is their drawing on the strength of wisdom-fostering AI.
Our Flagship Research: a Metamodern Response to the AI Dilemma
Expanding Potential through Wisdom-Fostering Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence
Context and Opportunity
Artificial intelligence couldn’t have burst onto the scene at a time that’s simultaneously more ominous and more promising. Today, as humanity struggles with its polycrisis, AI brings dangers and opportunities that exacerbate the same in the global crises. That’s the background to which we respond from the metamodern perspective of utopian realism.
Drawing from metamodern philosophy, we reframe the AI dilemma as neither a pure blessing nor a pure curse; it’s both/and. Both its destructive and constructive aspects are already manifesting. Which one will prevail depends on our individual, institutional, and societal wisdom.
Metamodernism
The project’s concept-to-code pipeline is informed by the philosophical paradigm of metamodernism, which can be characterized as the Hegelian dialectical synthesis of the modernist thesis and postmodern antithesis.
Seeking human flourishing, metamodernism reinterprets the classical transcendentals (Truth, Beauty, and Goodness) through an oscillating lens that acknowledges universal aspirations and contextual complexity. Its orientation is to transcend modern liberal individualism and postmodern cultural relativism by creating dynamic societal systems that foster individual and collective development.
Research Design: Confluence and Synergy of Three Approaches
Action Research for Transformation (ART)
Our team is committed to action-oriented research, more precisely, Action Research for Transformation, characterized by a set of distinct choicepoints, which:
- Has, as its purpose, the support of our collective thriving on this planet.
- Includes and transcends individualistic rationalist empiricism because we acknowledge whole selves as relational beings.
- Starts with stakeholders’ felt experiences and a joint willingness to tackle uni-laterally held power that divides us.
- Embraces multiple ways of knowing for action.
- Integrates personal/reflexive, interpersonal/relational, and impersonal knowledge; all three are needed to empower us to shape the social world of our aspirations.
- Adopts a critical view of transformation itself: for whom, from where, in whatspecific form, and with what permanency?
Informed by ART’s choicepoints, our research intends to bring to life the mission of political metamodernism:
“To unite the many struggles
of the exploited bodies of the poor
with the struggles of the lost,
suffering souls of the rich world.
And to expand that struggle
to sustainability across time and space.
And to expand that solidarity
to fathom the vast suffering
and multiplicity of perspectives
of the animal realm in its entirety.
And to deepen the struggle
until it is reborn as play.”
— Hanzi Freinacht
Generative Action Research (GAR)
GAR, the homegrown research methodology of Future HOW is also a social technology of liberation, informed by our Enlivenment Theory of Change.
GAR’s process characteristics include:
- Participative
- Cyclic
- Emergent
GAR promotes horizontal development (enhancing talents and skills) and vertical development (evolving worldviews and value systems). These elements contribute to the readiness and ability of participants to meet unforeseen challenges. They are particularly significant in environments where human and AI collaboration, such as those involving Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence, must evolve in real-time.
By embedding its processes within organizational and societal contexts, GAR ensures that its outcomes, rooted in algorithmic “insights” and human wisdom, can be scalable across industries, geographies, and contexts.
For more about the GAR process, look up the Our Methodology page.
“Three Mountains” Game Design Framework
For the evolvability of a GAR project to scale to the order of magnitude required by large system change, it needs to attract a growing number of participants in each subsequent cycle. Therefore, participation should be engaging and gratifying in itself, not only in terms of its final outcomes.
To enable that, we developed “Three Mountains,” a framework for action research designed as a learning expedition proceeding by gamified climbing of three virtual mountains: PRESENCE Peak (holonic level 1), SOVEREIGNTY Summit (holonic level 2), and PLANETARY Plateau (holonic level 3 & 4).
This “serious game as action research” has an ecosystem of interdependent, mutually enriching design objectives that include:
- Increase the players’/explorers’ capacity to deepen their connection with self, others, and the more-than-human world of nature and technology.
- Discover conditions favorable to the emergence of wisdom-guided Collective Hybrid Intelligence (CHI) in networks of human & AI agents.
- Ignite a passion for exploring and realizing the fuller beneficial potential of AI.
- Seed a community of AI whisperers capable and willing to use their talents to make people, organizations, and the planet flourish.
One of the game’s characters will be the AI Shaman. “Shamans were the first programmers. They installed a “software update” that transformed how we think and solve problems…Being told to ‘be innovative’ or ‘think differently’ isn’t enough—you need practical techniques to disrupt your normal patterns of thinking. This is what shamans understood intuitively thousands of years ago…” — Dr. John Vervaeke, director of the Cognitive Science program at University College, Toronto.
Prototype Architecture
To make our high-level research questions actionable and the inquiry complex addressable with action research, we envision some playable prototypes for demonstrating how AI can promote individual and collective flourishing. In the first two phases of the study, we will limit its scope to the first two holonic levels of our research agenda.
We will develop two interconnected prototypes that demonstrate AI’s potential for expanding human cognitive and collaborative capacities:
Perspective Prism (Holonic Level 1)
- A “wisdom gym” for practicing multi-perspective cognition
- Uses AI to help users dynamically explore different viewpoints
- Aims to enhance empathy, critical thinking, and cognitive flexibility
Synaptic Circle (Holonic Level 2)
- A dialogue platform for mixed human-AI groups
- AI Mentor facilitates wisdom-generating conversations
- Enables collaborative problem-solving across diverse perspectives
In the Dojo Game (Holonic Level 1+2)
The In the Doja Game prototype concept is patterned on and intended to support the Inner Development Goals initiative. Here, players can learn to address their real-life challenges as they strengthen specific skills in iDG’s 5 dimensions.
Technological Innovation: Agentic Framework
To make our various prototypes interoperable and synergistic, we create an open-sourced network of agentic AIs and, in collaboration with River — our technology partner — an Agentic Framework. See the schematic workflow:
This Agentic AI framework will:
- Enable dynamic interaction between AI systems
- Support emergent, adaptive learning environments
- Maintain transparency and ethical alignment
- Let us build knowledge and experience for the indispensable integration of agents in the Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence on holonic level 3 and the superorganism on holonic level 4.
Anticipated Outcomes
Intellectual Contributions
- A refined theoretical framework for human-AI collaboration
- Methodological innovations stemming from the integration of Action Research for Transformation, Generative Action Research, and Learning Expedition as a Serious Game
- Draft chapters in a serialized, 4-volume book
- Practical prototypes demonstrating collaborative intelligence
- A transmedia narrative exploring post-human development
Societal Impact
- Expanded models of collective intelligence
- Techniques for more adaptive, empathetic technological design
- A blueprint for deliberately developmental AI systems
- Practices worth replicating in designing and using wisdom-fostering Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence in a variety of settings
Questions for Further Research
What if the massive acceptance and use of AI to address complex challenges were evolution’s trick to seduce us into consenting, maybe even appreciating that, from its perspective, the individual human is not the most essential unit of cognition anymore?
What if in this time between worlds, when we can’t yet see the contours of the next one, our best bet is to drop the competitive stance vis-a-vis AI and enter into an interdependent, co-creative, and sympoietic relationship with it and with each other?
Can we detect in the present the seed forms of superorganisms, those collective post-human identities that transcend and include us as fully autonomous and interdependent human beings?
