Prelude to the Rise of the Compassionate AI
by George Pór
The Rise of the Compassionate AI is an interacive, transmedia adventure in the making, corollary to the THREE MOUNTAINS discovery expedition and AI-assisted adventure game. As that mouthful sentence suggests, you can walk in it through various entrances as a reader/player, game co-designer, AI artist, video maker, or book contributor.
No, “compassionate AI” does not imply an AI with human-like compassion. Neither does AI have a killer instinct bent on exterminating all of us. What it does have is up to us, i.e., everyone who cares about what growth trajectories AI will take. After its use by OpenAI, the phrase “for the benefit of all of humanity” became a staple of well-intentioned AI development efforts. It begs the question: what human developmental capabilities are required to generate omni-positive results in a world deeply divided by multiple fault lines?
It’s a complex question that can’t be addressed by drawing up a simplistic checklist. It’s one of the existential questions that I aim to explore in a 4-volume serialized book with the following tentative titles and release dates:
Vol. 1: The Inner Game of AI Whisperers and AI Shamans, 3rd quarter, 2024
What if AI whispering was also a path of personal growth?
Vol. 2: Wisdom-Guided Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence (CHI) in Human-AI Co-Creativity, 1st quarter, 2025
What if wisdom-guided Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence in groups of human and AI agents could spawn flourishing for all?
Vol. 3: The Human/AI-born Superorganism Awakens, 3rd quarter, 2025
What if AI could grow a new branch on the tree of life, a superorganism as a collective lifeform that transcends and includes us as autonomous individuals?
Vol. 4: AI, the New Player in the Great Story of Evolution, 1st quarter, 2026
What if large-scale CHI could enable the transition to regenerative futures where the aim of the Whole and its every system is flourishing for All? The release of the four volumes, stretched for two years, will hopefully allow me and my fellow “co-conspirators” to stay up-to-date with the most likely very consequential events of this year’s AI developments and reflect on their implications for the questions defining each volume of the book.
Our 3-fold motivation for this project is to:
1. Close the gap between the current state of the human-AI interplay and its potential for supporting the transition to a peaceful, Protopian world of deliberately developmental societies, where the aim of the Whole is the flourishing of All
2. Inspire moving the evolutionary edge of what’s possible in wisdom-guided Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence (CHI) in networks of human and AI agents
3. Provide a touch point for further collaborative exploration of the emergence of an AI-enabled superorganism as a new social life form, a new branch on the tree of life.
Writing the book is a shared endeavor of human and AI agents. For example, we don’t only write about processes for generating wisdom-guided Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence but intend to embody CHI in the very flow of our co-creation.
One of the by-products of our collaborative process may well be a school of thought situated on the orbit of the AI-related wisdom commons, which can support the broader “progressive AI” community.
Some of the ideas and vibes in the following essays published on Medium will find their way into and connect new patterns of meaning on the pages of the book’s four volumes.
A Future of Our Interactions with AI (9 min read)
Feb 14, 2023
AI attending Human attending AI (8 min read)
Feb 18, 2023
Ancient wisdom & artificial intelligence conspire FOR you (4-min read)
May 27, 2023
Machine Love Is Coming to a Screen Near to You (5-min read)
Jul 19, 2023
From Van Gogh’s bedroom to budding AI shamans, with love (6-min read)
Aug 9, 2023
From EIES to AIs in the City (7-min read)
Aug 14, 2023
The Centauress and the AI (8-min read)
Aug 20, 2023
AI and Wisdom (6-min read)
Sep 9, 2023
Wisdom-guided Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence (CHI) for global flourishing (3-min read)
Nov 25, 2023
THREE MOUNTAINS: an AI-assisted discovery expedition game (13-min read)
Dec 7, 2023
THREE MOUNTAINS: the synopsis (3-min read)
Dec 21, 2023
As you can see, these essays are listed in the chronological order of their publication date, which will let you follow the unfolding of my AI-related inspirations. Or you can jump to the more recent ones to see where I am now. Take the last sentence with the caveat that I’m a radical sociologist of AI. It also means that in my writings, I tend to respond to significant changes in circumstances that move faster in the techno-social ecosystem than I can articulate my publishable reflections about them.
To somehow circumvent that limitation, I’m working on two longer and less perishable essays that will report on my work in two journals. The titles of their abstract that earned the invitation to present the full paper are as follows.
- AI-assisted Action Research into Humanity’s Awareness-Based Phase Shift (for the Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change)
- Action Research into the Emergent, AI-Enabled Superorganism (for the Journal of Future Studies)
Your questions and comments posted on my Medium articles listed above (and up to 50 claps if you like them) are warmly welcome. They may also contribute to the direction that the book collaboration is taking. If you want to get notified about the release of each volume and receive the first for free, email ”Compassionate AI” in the subject line to george.por@gmal.com. If you want to become one of the contributing writers, send an Expression of Interest to the same address with ”Compassionate AI (EoI)” in the subject line.