Nikki Mirghafori - How Silence Can Awaken Your Emotional Healing

30:17Afterwards, they said, okay, I think now I can do loving kindness for myself. Now I can hold the pain. Now I can touch it. You know, what's funny is it works for me the opposite way. I do lots of silent retreats. I don't do the organized ones because I'm a freaking introvert. But it really is interesting. I actually love time completely alone, right? And sometimes, I mean, I don't go fully 100 % silent, but I go silent the entire day other than 40 minutes a day for 40 days in a row, okay? And it is incredible, incredible. It comes to me with the opposite. I don't get pain coming out. I get massive inspiration, incredible clarity, an overwhelming feeling of gratitude to have been given the gift of space to just be there, just be there and connect, of course, to nature because it's only done.

31:17And I mean, sometimes you can do it in your living room, everyone, but definitely in nature is a totally different experience. And it's just beautiful. And I ask the question because I believe people are depriving themselves of one of the biggest gifts that you can ever be given, which is a moment of silence to connect deeply to who you are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not just a moment of silence. And as I hear more you do, you connect with silence continuously. There's something about the continuity that settles the mind, that really, really settles the mind. And I would also like to say that I value and respect and love hearing that, for example, you do the immersing yourself in nature, which is so healing, connecting with our nature outside, nature inside.

32:15and also there's something as I found with the organized retreats there's something about the common humanity something about the common humanity that all of us are doing this sitting and walking in silence eating in silence there's something different so as much as I'm bowing to your did you say introverted? I would lovingly invite you. I would lovingly challenge that introverted side to consider perhaps something a little different to see. And also there's something about the, I would say the support, the support that's offered both by the community in silence, in complete silence. And also the support of teachers who are bringing in teachings and are just supporting in a very light, light, gentle way to support whatever needs to be touched into even more deeply.

33:17Might be joy, might be gratitude, might be wow, might be divinity, might be just all of that. It's wonderful to avail ourselves of the amazing support of the community. I think that's the bit of it that is definitely, definitely needed. I mean, the idea of that deep connection in my personal view is perhaps as important to connecting to oneself. In reality, and I'm not making excuses, it's because my life is so flooded with others all the time. Like, I mean, today I interacted with probably five, 600 people and I do that every day. Some days I interact with thousands of people and, and it is, you know, when I get that final, okay, you know, this is my time now.

34:03I just simply disappear. It's quite, when most people don't recognize how introverted I am, because I'm out there all the time. I mean, I answer every message I get on Instagram. Oh my, oh my. No, no, hundreds of them. Heavens, oh my. No, no, hold on. And most of them would answer back, and then it's a conversation, and we'll talk for a while, and unbelievable presence of humanity in my life. And then I go on retreat and I go like, you know, guys, I love you very much. I'll see you in a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. You know who you remind me of, Nikki? Did you read the work of Michael Singer?

34:46The Untethered Soul and the Surrender Experiment. Oh, you have to read the Surrender Experiment. It's an incredible, I mean, And Untethered Soul is definitely one of my favorite five books of all time. But then the Surrender Experiment. So he's a very successful business person who also was, you know, trying to find a path in life and then found transcendental meditation and then became basically more and more successful as he followed his path, basically studied the Dharma and followed the path. I mean, the idea of really finding those connections. Amazing, amazing book. And you remind me a lot of that.

35:29But I want to talk about the other side of you for a second. Yeah, but before we depart, there's something really important I want to say because I don't want to give the impression that sitting meditation retreats and being in silence is all about touching pain. That's not what it's about. I don't want to leave people with that impression, not at all. I think until we touch the pain, we don't feel the joy. That's the truth. I think that's the point I went to. Yes, exactly. That's one thing. That is one point because we cannot push away the pain to touch the joy. Exactly. And many people try to push away the pain or don't even know it's there.

36:05And yet, one of the purposes of meditation retreats is to be in silence for insights to arise. Insights not just into the personal nature of life, but it's really personal insights that give you a sense of, or that lead to universal insights. That it's not just me, everything arises and passes away. What is the meaning of life? Why am I doing this? And that's another conversation. I'll put that on a post-it note. But more meaning and more service and more goodness, more kindness, just all of those things that flower when we actually are silent and take a break away from our habitual patterns of being greedy or wanting more or pushing things away or being angry.

36:51Just seeing the patterns of the mind too, understanding all that. And wake up, awakening, wake up. That's really what awakening liberation is about, having more freedom to be of service. 100%. One thing I keep thinking about deeply is, again, similarities between us is I've been very engaged in the modern world and technology. I've developed a ton of stuff that sometimes I look back and I wish I hadn't, honestly. I was chatting with someone today because of the Google executive that resigned, Jeffrey and then basically the idea that we all thought we were doing amazing we all believed deep inside our hearts that we were going to create a better world and we have i mean i look back at my career and i openly you know remember the times when i started at google and you know i i really was instrumental in changing google's minds around the idea of bringing technology to emerging markets i I started half of Google's operations globally, more than 103 languages.

38:00And that made a difference. Four billion people had access to knowledge and technology, right? But then I think there was a point where most of us, I don't know if you went through that, where we started to say, that's enough. You know, more of this is not really necessary for humanity. And it starts to pause a singularity. Let's not call it a risk, but a singularity. For our listeners, a singularity is a point where we don't know how the game will be played anymore. We don't know if it's good or bad. We can't predict the future. So you've been in AI and technology your whole life. You've been in spirituality your whole life.

38:39I am very, very curious about the overlap between them. But I'd like to first understand your position on where we stand. If we take a point of singularity as part of humanity's future, how far do you think we are from an AI that is as intelligent or more intelligent than humans? Yeah, excellent question and comes up in so many different ways, right? This question, it's in the zeitgeist. Everybody's asking it. People have been in AI for many years. And I also appreciate that there's a lot of fear for many people. And there's a lot of hype also. It's a lot of hype. Yes, I agree. A lot of hype. So here's, so what I'm about to say this, you well know, but for our listeners, so there is strong AI and weak AI.

39:35All right. So two different types of AI. So, strong AI is an AI, an artificial intelligent mechanism that basically can, not only can think, but it can also feel and cognize. And basically, it has human-like capacities. Yeah. Then there is weak AI. So weak AI are systems that can do a task and very intelligently seeming from the outside, they are performing the task as a human being would. It's like a black box, but there is no intention. There is no feeling. There is no cognition, consciousness in weak AI. And weak AI are all the systems we have today, facial recognition, chat GPT, Dolly, you name it.

40:31Every system we have is weak AI. It has been programmed to do a particular task. It has pattern recognition, has studied lots and lots of terabytes and even more of data, and it's giving you predicting patterns. That's weak AI. That's all we have. Yeah. And one of the reasons for the hype is that people are very concerned with ChatGPT being so intelligent, when in reality it isn't. It isn't. It's a parrot. It's just a parrot. You know, the way I like it is... I'm sorry, I do not want to insult parrots. I am so sorry. Parrots, I am so sorry. Parrots actually are some of the most intelligent beings.

41:14Parrots are very, very intelligent. I was just listening to a report of how parrots are intelligent and they like to connect with other parrots and they have emotions. Like, I'm so sorry, parrots. But let's explain that to our listeners. So, ChatGPT is like, I think about that little kid whose parents will teach them, you know, here are the 52, I don't know how the number, American states and 44 presidents, or I don't know how many by now and the child will recite them very quickly and say them so intelligently and you'll go like oh that's a project protege he he remembers all or she remembers all of the u.s presidents and all of the u.s states that's not intelligent at all right and that's exactly what chat gpt is doing only it's looking at 44 billion pages of information and able to using computer power do that that's not what concerns me what concerns me is that is that we are on a path to strong AI.

42:14It is not yet within our hands, but it's becoming more and more evident that it will happen. Yeah, yeah. So that's where you and I might differ, and it's okay to differ. Absolutely. Because, yes, weak AI is here, and I'm very concerned about weak AI. We have to be concerned about weak AI. Why would you do that? Concerned about weak AI? All the ethical concerns of weak AI, of whose hands it's in, what it is doing, all the discrimination, all the reports. Absolutely. All the issue of the privacy, security, all the ways that we are racist and all the hate speech and all the discriminatory decision making that we do for hiring and with respect to women and minorities, all of those decisions, we, KI, is learning from those decisions because that's what in the training set.

43:15So repeating our fallibility are the ways that we are unkind and prejudiced and we have blind spots. So not just our blind spots, but the way that the designers, basically all the way we are both misusing weak AI. I think the misuse and the misguidance. The misguidance. I mean, there's so many different problems with the five different aspects that the data security and there's another one I haven't named, which is decision making, explainable AI. So all of these are already problems with weak AI. and recently the White House for example came out with an AI Bill of Rights and it's very well explained in the AI Bill of Rights it came out a few months ago the five aspects that we want to be very open and clear and make ethical decisions about weak AI so I'm concerned about weak AI I don't want to get too excited about strong AI and lose what we actually need to be concerned about because fear about the future, sometimes if we get too hyped up about that, we lose perspective on what we need to do now.

44:32I'm 100 % with you. I don't disagree at all. I mean, the reality of the matter is that the biggest concern I would have is that whatever ethics we show and we teach weak AI are going to be the absolute underlying building blocks of any other further AI, whatever that is. But you said you disagreed with my view. I did. So I'm going to get back to that. I'm going to go there. So we might disagree. I'm not quite sure, but I'm kind of feeling into that. I'm quite concerned about weak AI. We agree on that. But strong AI, which really brings up the question of consciousness. And that's really the question of consciousness.

45:15I mean, that's it. That's the heart of strong AI. Let's just face it. The question of consciousness, I do not believe at this point with everything that I know about consciousness from my studies and practice in both AI and in Buddhism and states of mind, which by the way, there's more I want to say there because I feel like there's something else left there I want to talk about. But based on all the experiences, I've come from a scientific materialistic point of view to one that does not equate consciousness with just the functioning of the brain alone as we see it. 100%. Yeah. I don't see that.

46:02And yet, there is a dependence. It's not equivalent. A does not equal B. And yet, there's a dependence. of our consciousness on the circuitry that we have. If we had silicone as circuitry, it would be something else. It wouldn't be what it is. So it's really a question of consciousness. And I don't think we will have consciousness as we know it as human beings, as we understand it. Definitely not as we know it. So that's the question of strong AI. But then the question is consciousness, is consciousness only present as we know it is a tree conscious i think that's a very important question because so humanity has two ways of looking at life one one way is we say look if it's not like our intelligence it's not intelligence if it's not felt like our love it's not love for god's sake when we try to look for extraterrestrial life we look for water on those planets.

47:02It's like, are you serious? Is the only way to sustain life, does it have to be similar to us? When we try to communicate with UFOs or whatever people who believe in other extraterrestrial life, we send radio waves. We expect that we will get a signal from them. Humanity is so confined within our ways that we believe that anything that behaves differently is not worthy of recognition as a form of life or a form of intelligence or a form of consciousness. So the question is, is a tree conscious? If you go downwards first, is a tree conscious? Is a rabbit conscious? Is a pebble conscious? Okay. And there are philosophical arguments that will say, yes, they may be conscious differently.

47:53Okay. They may respond to that consciousness differently, but a tree is definitely conscious of the change of seasons. It sheds its leaves when the season changes, right? A tree is definitely conscious of its fellow trees, okay? Yeah. And it connects to them through, you know, the root system and other ways. And we have research that shows that. I would even argue, if you want to go bigger, that the entire universe is conscious, okay? Yeah. We're not disagreeing. But what's interesting is that I don't want to put materials before consciousness. I think there is a dependence between consciousness and anything existing at all.

48:39So in a way... Absolutely, 100%. That's where it becomes quite interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is a great book by Carlo Rovelli called Helgoland, in which he explains the most recent discoveries in quantum physics. Correct. And it's a beautiful book. I kept listening to it over and over, and I won't listen to it again. And I think in some ways he is a mystic because the way he actually breaks down and talks about quantum physics and the importance of observations. Observations in the equations, in the basic equations of quantum physics, observation is an important aspect of matter existing at all.

49:27So that observation, that consciousness is a part of matter existing. it's fascinating the way he and I'm out of my depth trying to explain it as beautifully as he does and yet the point being here that actually observations or consciousness or knowing seeing being is part of anything existing at all is that part of the matter exist they're conjoined it's not one before the other it's both of them together it's a very simplified grade school way of saying it And sorry, Carlo, if I'm completely botching up your amazing, amazing work. I think everyone should read that book, Helgoland, H-E-L-G-O-L-A-N-D-I.

50:11I'm in total agreement with this. I mean, in reality, the confusing bit of this entire existence, if you want, is that it might very well be consciousness first. As a matter of fact, for anyone who believes in the non-physical side of us, it surely is. OK, and quantum physics supports that in a very, very deep way, basically, without an observation, nothing exists. And the real question is, what do you observe with? Do you observe with your eyes? Do you observe with your fingers when you touch something? Or what do you really observe with? In reality, these are all sensors on the machine that communicates through the central processing unit that's called the brain.

50:55But you observe with your non-physical force. So if you let me take a deep dive now, just for the fun of it, let's go to the Buddhist cosmology for a moment. Are you up for it? Absolutely, 100%. That's why we're here. So the Buddhist cosmology, since you were talking about sensors and consciousness without body, without a body. In the Buddhist cosmology, there are many different realms. There is the human realm, which is kind of in the middle, is a realm with enough joy and enough sorrow for us to wake up in. to have experiences that both are tough and easy and rewarding. And then in the lower realms, there are the various hell realms, which I can describe.

51:39And, you know, there's the, for example, there's the animal realm. Yes, there is consciousness. There are sentient beings. But yes, there is not enough opportunity for insight and awareness, etc. And then there are the hell realms. One of the favorites, I'll just drop it in, is the hungry ghost realm, which is these beings that have really long neck and thin mouth and really huge bellies so they can never get enough to eat. They're always hungry but they don't have enough to eat. And some people say that these realms are not just somewhere else, some realm elsewhere but it's actually what we experience in our daily life.

52:18So when we really want something, it's never enough, never enough. You know, people who are power hungry or money hungry, never enough. They have a huge belly and a tiny neck. So these realms. But now there are these other realms of experience, these realms. And there are many realms and a heavenly realm, for example. And one of those realms is a realm that there's only consciousness and no physicality, no bodies. It's just conscious. So it took me a while to get there. But in terms of our conceptualization of what is possible, what is possible to only have consciousness and knowing, but not necessarily bodies or physically committed to go with it.

53:02So just opening that up. And one thing that I would also add to these realms is where I've come to. I want to go back to a moment to the story where I told you that I became a, in terms of when we're talking about God and about beliefs, and they said I became an agnostic. I don't know. I don't know. It's not important. Through my Buddhist practice, and I've sat long retreats, three-month silent retreats, multiple three-month silent retreats with my teacher, Venerable Pak Syeda, who's a well-regarded Buddhist master, Burmese master. and states of consciousness that I even did not know existed that were accessible through his guidance have become available and accessible.

53:53And through these experiences, I've become more quote-unquote religious than I've ever been. And I put the religious in quotes because the way my conception of God and divinity and deity have been reshaped are so different from what I had as a young girl. Remember we talked about why do bad things happen to good people? It was so relational. It's relating to, say, as Kohlberg's hierarchy of moral development. There's a low level of moral development where it's like, okay, I'm going to be good, good things happen to me, good girl, bad girl. They're just kind of relational, relativistic. and then through the stages of development, the last stage is self-actualization, which is a very different conception of moral development and seeing the world.

54:45And through that, the sense of divinity, the sense of goodness, divinity, if you can call it God, you can call it whatever you want, is not this just relational outside of me, good, bad. It's everything, through everything. So it's more like hierophany. It's hierophany, which is even greater than panentheism, which is not that God is in everything, but also divinity, goodness, this love, whatever you want to call it, is not just outside of us, but not only are we it, but as we grow, it grows. I think this is, I wanted to go back to AI, but I'm not going to. I have to stick with this topic for a second because in a very unusual way, I tend to believe that this is probably the biggest missed opportunity for most of us in the modern world is the ability to access that state of being that we perhaps come from and perhaps should return to and perhaps should at least experience and become aware of, but we get to run around.

56:02What if we're not coming from and returning to it, but actually we are it? the whole time we are here? What if it's the same thing? We are other than the moments when our minds blur that experience. What if it's always here? What if it's always here? We just don't see it. What if it's always already here? Always already here. We're never far from it. It's always here, smack center, permeating through this experience, around this experience. It's just that we stir it up or we don't see it. Yeah, but it's always here. It's not something that we depart from. If it is always here, why look for any other experience?

56:51Ah, it's because we're not looking at it. It's already here, but we're not looking. That's what I'm saying, but it's not far away. I know for a fact, because I don't speak of that much, but I know for a fact that when in my silent experiences, I'm in a different place, right? I've never had psychedelics in my life. I've never - Neither have I. You and I both. Yeah. I never drank in my life. I never had any drugs in my life. I smoke a cigar every now and then. That's like the furthest I've gone. And in reality, I go to places that I promised you, mother ayahuasca wouldn't take you okay and i think the reality is that humanity somehow is missing how much time do you have nikki we could talk for hours you know one of the one of the most interesting come for a visit mo come to california for a visit yeah or we just wait until it's midnight your time and then you have to go to bed no so anyway the the trick the trick is most neuroscientists would explain the impact that certain psychedelics or mushrooms or drugs or whatever will have on your brain is they'll disable certain parts of your machine, basically, so that other parts become more prominent and you get a slightly different configuration of a brain receiver, if you want, so your consciousness becomes altered, right?

58:17And there are many ways we can do that. My interest in what you just said is that it's accessible. And yet, we're so stuck in this physical realm of often being the creature with the big belly and the narrow neck, not rising in those other, let's say, less suffering states of existence. And we're just so stuck in it why are we so stuck in it habit patterns of the mind it's our habit patterns of the mind i think the biggest eye-opener for me was because i was you know born a muslim i was also very religious at a young age i declared myself agnostic around age 16 and then did what i used to call the mathematics of the divine and just became a lot more convinced of the presence of a divine designer, as I call it.

59:14But during that journey, I was also very athletic as a young man, so I didn't drink. And I still, until today, never had a drink. I mean, my dad gave me a glass of wine when I was 11, which I think did the job, honestly. I was like, this sucks. Like, I really don't like it, right? But that's the point. The point is, without it, I remember vividly, there were very tough experiences in my life where I didn't have the chance to go escape. And so I had to work on my mind. I had to teach my mind to find the same calm and peace without an external substance, right? And I think with psychedelics specifically, I wish I could take the shortcut and go to those experiences quickly.

59:59but in somehow i'm convinced that if i stay the course if i continue on the path and work on my mind i'll end up in those experiences but in a way that's fully integrated within me i love how you described the higher realms that have consciousness but don't have a physical presence right uh so wouldn't you think that ai is halfway between those they don't have the physical existence that we have, but they have, depending on how you define consciousness, they have a very high level of consciousness. Yeah, yeah. I think at this point, I haven't seen enough to be convinced yet. I'll just leave it at that.

1:00:48I'm not saying that if we have this conversation in a few years, I would be in a different place. But at this point, I'm not there yet in my personal. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. I think that I think the three big arguments around AI have been creativity, emotions and consciousness. Right. And again, because humanity would go into that conviction that we're the most intelligent machine on the planet, we would tell ourselves that we're such a great machine that nobody else is able to feel jealousy or, you know, grief or whatever. I actually think there are some animals that feel jealousy and grief.

1:01:33Oh, absolutely. Of course they do. And there's, yeah, absolutely. And I think we have more and more evidence that AI is capable of feeling emotions. Yeah, I'm not quite going there yet. Let me explain my point of view and then tell me that I'm wrong. My point of view is that hate is a very predictable emotion. Okay. For the romantics of us, hate is this, or, you know, let's take an easier one. Jealousy is a very, you know, is a very romantic thing that comes over me and it's very unpredictable and it's who I am and it's the situation. And my engineer's mind says jealousy follows an equation. Okay.

1:02:14Envy follows an equation. Hate follows an equation. Fear. Fear follows an equation. Yeah. So fear's equation is a moment in the future is less safe for me than this moment. I hear you. I completely hear you, Mo. You are a behaviorist, my dear. You are a behaviorist. You are a behaviorist and lots of behaviorism in psychology and it has worked well. And yet I'm not. I'm not a behaviorist. But why do you think that? So a jellyfish, if you come close to it, will think that there is a threat. A moment in the future is less safe than now. And it will just react to its fear. A cat will hiss. A puffer fish will puff.

1:02:58A human may go to fight or flight. We all have the same logic of the emotion. We all feel it differently, I'm sure. But then we react to it differently, right? Why would an informed machine that can have cognition and logic and decision-making abilities, why would it not have some kind of fear if it knows that a tidal wave is approaching its data center? Yeah. So what you're describing, again, it's a behaviorist way of seeing. It's a black box of seeing the world. And it's a very engineering approach. Yes, of course. Yeah, it's a very engineering approach and the behaviorism. And there have been lots of behaviorism in psychology trying to explain human behavior, animal behavior.

1:03:48And it's been a wave in psychology. And I trust you know about this already. And yet there are different ways. And behaviorism has had its field day in psychology. And it kind of, it had its heyday and it doesn't anymore for reasons why it does not exactly explain human emotions in psychology or even any other. and it doesn't really touch into the qualia. So if we really feel into the philosophical discussion, philosophical concerns about what emotions are, because if you take it as a black box behaviorism, exactly what you said is right. I mean, that's our view of the world. And yeah, maybe there's fear and emotions.

1:04:29It's a black box. We don't know what's happening in there. And that's the beauty, and it's also the weakness of behaviorism, because it's all a black box. It's input in, input out. What's happening there? Don't know. Miracle happens. Something happens. Don't know. Don't care. Let's just look at behavior. However, when you actually start to look at other ways, for example, the qualia, as Plato talked about, the qualia, what is the qualia of experience? What is my qualia versus your qualia? Are they even comparable, the qualia of our experience of the color orange or an emotion? What is that? When you start to talk about qualia and really lots of treaties and the work of, oh gosh, the philosopher who's talked a lot about AI, the philosophy of AI from, I'm blanking on his name.

1:05:25If I remember it, I'll tell you so that you can put it in the notes for this conversation. But really about the qualia, what these emotions, what these feelings, what these conscious states are, that's where I would put the pointer. And that's where you and I differ. So I'm not a behaviorist. So you don't believe that AI will ever have emotions? You don't believe that they will ever have consciousness? If you're a behaviorist, you don't know what the black box is. And you say, oh, yeah, sure. but if you're actually thinking about the qualia what is an emotion what is the quality in emotion what is then i at this point no at this point at this point no and i'm happy to talk to you in a few years but at this point no consciousness and emotions i'm not there i'd probably say it's not going to be a few years but yes we definitely should talk about it again i think the reality is that once we get to AGI, which is not too far, I think we will probably be dealing with a spectrum of emotions that we don't even understand and a view of consciousness that probably mirrors our consciousness versus a tree and how a tree is conscious.

1:06:44Again, it depends. If you're a behaviorist yet, yes. If you're not a behaviorist and you care about the qualia, no. Yeah, that's great. So how about we agree to disagree for now and come back to this? No, no, no, absolutely. I mean, that's exactly what this is about. I think that the current weak AI, as you described it, is enough to warrant our attention, let's put it this way. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you quickly skimmed through multiple issues with the ethics, right? If I would start by saying I observed in many of them that those were magnification of human ethics. Absolutely. So tell me a bit about that.

1:07:28Where would the topic of ethics and AI overlap? Yeah, goodness. You know, it's so interesting. when I was going to school, undergrad and graduate school, there were no courses on ethics at the time. We're just engineers. Remember, Mo, right? We're just being taught to code and program and build systems. Wasn't that fun? Come on. Did you say wasn't that fun? Yeah, I loved every bit of it. Oh, I loved it too. It was fun. But there was no ethics. We didn't have any ethics courses, right? Absolutely. It was none. It was just, well, how you program, how you build a system, what you think about architecture.

1:08:13And yet, nowadays, I'm delighted that there are ethics courses in every department. And for computer scientists and engineers, and not just for engineers who build bridges and etc. I think they have more ethics than we do. but ethics courses. Yeah. Yeah. Ethics courses than we do. But, but the more that we have built these systems, and as you were saying earlier, as you have felt in your career and the people that you know, you've had these realizations, conversations that, wow, we've built some very powerful systems and considering their, their impact on, on humanity. Yeah. So it's really a choice that us as designers, and when I say us, not just you, a lot of people who design these systems, and plenty of people have talked about these in the recent years.

1:09:16For example, the Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris, and others have really talked about how the choices that have been made to intentionally make the systems addictive, to intentionally play into the dopamine receptors of our brain that like buttons. The more likes you get, more dopamine. And if you don't get likes, oh, it's just all these evolutionary systems that we already have to tap into them, to tune into them, to get more eyeball hours. Just all these design decisions, these are ethical decisions. 100%. For the benefit of more profit, more money. And it's the greed aspect. It's more, more, more.

1:10:03It's back to that realm of the big bellies and neck and mouth. More, more, more can never be enough, can never be enough. And tuning into that both for consumers as well as the big corporations, as well as the capitalistic society of why are we doing? Why, why, why? More, more, more. Never enough. More, more, more. So the ethical questions have to do with why are we building what we're building? Why are we building? What's the point? Are we building it for people to have better lives, to really serve? Are we building so that our organization makes more money for us and for shareholders? I mean, the intention is in every decision we make is an ethical decision, essentially.

1:10:55even as when we thought you know when we're coding a for loop or or till then or whatever it is it's an ethical decision so so it is that's where the overlap really occurs and um and when i say that yes there's there's a lot more also to cover under that um uh headline for designers but also for consumers because as consumers, we don't want to feel powerless. Like, oh yeah, these designers and these computer scientists and big corporations are making all decisions. Well, we pay, we as consumers, we vote with our dollars. We vote with our votes. And with our swipes. Yeah, exactly. And abandoning, abandoning or not abandoning or using or not using systems.

1:11:47So it's quite interesting that you bring that up because I recall my very early years at Google where, you know, the day I walked into my first meeting in my Google office and I asked people, so why are you here? Without exception, I think when I joined, there must have been six, 5 ,000 people at Google. So it was reasonably early. And every single person said, because we're organizing the world's information. Okay. And every one of us was a geek. Every one of us was a nerd. We loved the information. We loved knowledge. We loved learning. We wanted to do something with it. And the product reflected that, right?

1:12:27There was a moment when, you know, sitting in a specific meeting when organic results disappeared completely from the screen. Right. So I raised my hand and I said, look, look at the screen you're displaying here. I was responsible for the revenue. I was a senior executive bringing in a big chunk of the revenue. I said, look at this screen. There are no organic results. Where is the mission? This is all ads, right? And it's just the question. And by the way, I never ever at any moment in time, and even today, I trust Sundar so deeply as a good human being, but I never felt that the company was unethical.

1:13:08But there was a time where the company was more driven by the rules of capitalism than they were by their ethics and value system. And it's not that they were doing wrong. It's that they stopped striving for more right, if you know what I mean. Absolutely. I hear you. And I don't attack Google at all. As a matter of fact, I will keep saying this for as long as I'm convinced of it. They're probably one of the best out there. They really are one of the biggest charities on the planet in terms of giving search for free. right they're making money from advertisers but imagine if you are in Afghanistan or if you're in Bangladesh and if you're in Africa you're getting all of that knowledge you know for free having said that I do not know of a big you know big technology player that's prioritizing ethics okay that is is prioritizing ethics when they code so that the machines develop an ethical code.

1:14:10Okay. I do not know. I mean, chat GPT 3.5 started to get attacked a little bit for being able to ask questions that could be against humanity, if you want, as an answer. And they added a lot more now around, no, I can't answer that for you or that wouldn't be right and so on. Right. and people then people ask it tell me you know if my grandma asked you or if you if you're my grandma you're like people are getting around that but anyway yeah i mean one of one of the interesting ones i saw i saw on instagram the other day is uh show me all of the of the sites where i can pirate movies and then chat gpt answers and says you know i'm not you're not supposed to do that i'm not supposed to help you with that and so he says yes exactly i want to know those sites so that I avoid them.

1:14:57And those then chat GPT gives you a full list of it. Right. But you know, the thing here is this. The thing here is that there are two layers where those ethics are applied. One is the layer of the developer and the other is the layer of the user. Right. And in a very interesting way, I don't think we're doing either. I think there is an incredible. I mean, one of the things I'm hoping to write a short article about is what I call the snake oil salesman phenomena of AI. How many people on social media today are talking about click on this site, then copy it and put it in that site and then do this and then do that.

1:15:42And you will have a fake video that can make you a hundred dollars a day. Like, is that really what we're teaching the machines? Is that really the benefit that we're supposed to bring to humanity from this advanced technology? And once again, like you said, it's going to magnify our ethics and our ethics are questionable as we speak. So what can be done around that? What can be done on the developer side? What can be done on the user side? How can we ensure a more ethical future for our AI? Yeah. Let a thousand flowers bloom. And what I mean by that is there are so many groups and communities and nonprofits right now speaking about and trying to put together ethical codes.

1:16:35For example, I was part of IEEE's initiative a few years ago. So there are these different initiatives to actually to create these stamps of approval of ethical AI in different areas. So that if a company or a product wanted to have the IEEE ethical AI stamp of approval, yet this is what you would do. So we created lots of different codes. So there are different ways to do about this. Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris, as I mentioned, they've put out a course for developers to watch, a free course. And I don't know, hundreds of thousands of people have done it. There are just so many different activities happening around making designers and people, users more aware of how to be.

1:17:32So it's really both educational, educating the public, educating designers. But it's also, I think what is really important is the work that you and I are doing as well, which is aligning each person themselves, waking up to their own ethics, waking up to personal ethics as a human being. And that's what I'm doing with my life, with teaching about teaching mindfulness and teaching about love, teaching mindfulness of mortality. Like, gosh, I'm going to die. This is impermanent. How do I want to live? I'm going to leave all the money. I'm going to leave all the fame. I'm going to leave all of this.

1:18:15Like, how do I want to show up? What's the point of all this? So these deep reflections in order to change the way we show up as human beings, as users, as designers, one by one by one, how do I want to spend my precious, precious, precious time on this earth? So that is another way of training. So when you ask, all of these, all of these flowers, let them bloom. May we grow as users, as programmers, as members of the human race in kindness, in ethical behavior, in awareness, in our humanity, little by little by little. I don't agree more. I mean, most people who read my work would know that. I write the very last statement of a book first, and then I work my way from where we are to that statement.

1:19:08And my very last statement in Scary Smart was, isn't it ironic that the very core of what makes us human is what could actually save our future? The reality is that the only way for us to create a set of ethical super intelligences is for us to be ethical as well, is to show them what ethics are. I mean, it's quite eye-opening that this is what it comes down to, but it's also so shocking that we have to remind people of that. Don't you think? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so interesting. But you know what, Mo? Of course, of course, it couldn't be otherwise because these systems, right? These, say, organizations, right?

1:19:57organizations, systems. When we come together to create a system, whether it's a computer system, whether it's an organization, it's all about people, people coming together, people coming together to create systems to serve other human beings. It's all about relationships. It's about human beings. So as Gandhi said, if you want to change the world, start with yourself. It's about how we show up, changing our internals, our waking up internally as much as possible in order to show up differently in the world. So it's not surprising, right? We're creating these systems to relate to each other. So let's start right here.

1:20:40As you beautifully said in the last phrase. You said it much better in the last sentence of your book. Let me then ask you three very quick questions. Do you think there will be spiritual AI? What do you mean by spiritual AI? Do you think they will ponder spiritual topics like you? They will choose to be agnostic or quote-unquote religious? Oh, that is so funny you ask that. I mean, there's already one AI robot that's preaching Buddhist verses, Buddhist texts. So there's already one. Next question. Interesting. But some people find it creepy and it's not. And also the other thing is that, again, it's like chat GPT.

1:21:20You've given it content and it doesn't quite understanding what awakening is, what an experience of awakening actually is. That's another thing. Let me just bring that in quickly because that goes back to our conversation that we agreed to disagree on about qualia, what actually it is that you're talking about or whether you're actually just talking about something. So there was this interview between, gosh, what was it? It showed up in New York Times, a piece of that. Oh, yeah, it was the person from Google who got fired because they thought that some Google system was sentient. That's it, that's it.

1:21:58And there was an excerpt from that conversation that showed in New York Times. I don't know if you saw that or not, but just as a quick reminder. the person asks the AI that the employee, the Google employee asked AI about a Zen koan, about enlightenment, about awakening, which was about a broken mirror. That awakening, enlightenment is like a broken mirror. And the person asked, okay, so what does that mean? And the AI spoke pretty, you know, pretty cogently, but it missed the most important understanding of awakening, what actually awakening is. Well, since I'm talking about it, maybe I'll just spell it out.

1:22:46So basically, as best as I can remember, the AI said, well, when a mirror has been broken, a mirror can never be reconstructed again. So awakening is like that. When you've become awakened, you can't go back to the original state. So you can go back to helping others in the world and then go back to your awakened state. That's what AI said. So the person was impressed. And yet, as a Buddhist practitioner who has a sense of what actually awakening, enlighten, what actually it means, what the experience, inner experience, is not just what I've read in the books. But yeah, it's not like you go back after you've had awakening experiences.

1:23:35You don't go back to the world. You don't exit that, go back to the world, help people, and then go back to your happy, enlightened semi-retirement and hang out there. That's not how it works. If you read the books, that's the AI understanding. But actually, it's an integration. You become changed forever. It's in the way you show up, in the way you act, in the way you speak. It's not this toggling back and forth. So the point being, yes, maybe you'll see the text. It's spitting out what sounds like, yeah, it knows what awakening is. Maybe this AI is actually awakened, but it actually has no clue what it really feels like, what the experience of it is.

1:24:19Anyway, I rest my case. Is that enough for the first question? Not yet, Nikki. Where do you think? I mean, you have to be lost first anyway. So let's hope they will not be. Where do you think this is going? So if I give you a scale of 1 to 10 where human and AI in 20 years is a utopia at 10, human and AI in 20 years is a dystopia at zero, where do you think we will end up? Oh, my God, this is great. I love it. You know, your question reminds me of, did you see New York Times or was this that dystopia, utopia and different people had been put on different areas of the graph? Did you see this? No, no, no.

1:25:01What is it? No. If I find it, I'll send it to you. Basically, they put maybe Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman on Utopia. Oh, yeah, it was two-dimensional axis. So it was Utopia and let's go faster, let's pause. So that was the Y axis. And the X axis was Utopia versus Dystopia. and they had sam altman and and to the far right and top i was like the top let's go fast and create a utopia exactly utopia and then there was sindra pichai and and a few other you know maybe the head of uh um apple maybe it was anyway so a few people there and then there was the the center neither dystopia neither utopia uh temnet gerbu kind of in the middle but below the zero so so So slow down.

1:25:57It could be either. It's neither you. It's both, you know, it's kind of measured. And then on the left, slow down. Way, way, way slow down. You had Tristan Harris and a few other philosophers like, stop now. And it's going to be a dystopia. So you're asking me to place myself on that esteemed axis. So where I would put myself is actually is where I think Temit Gorbu is, which is Gorbu. I hope I'm saying her name correctly, which is it could go either. It could go either way. It really depends.

1:26:36I want to be open-minded or open-eyed about the gifts and the perils, the perils and the promise. So perils and the promise. So I put myself kind of in the middle. And now I'm going to give you maybe one more answer to you. You didn't ask for it. But shall we speed up or slow down? I would say we need to slow down a little bit. We need to slow down a little bit and get our ethics straight. Just a little bit to get our ethics straight before we continue. Not stop, but just slow down a bit. Yeah, I think when you said it can go either way, believe it or not, in my mind, I believe it will go both ways.

1:27:21Yeah, yeah, yeah. There will be quite a lot of advancements and a lot of good for humanity, but there could be quite a few mistakes that… I agree with you, Mo. Yeah, I think instead of either way, I agree with you both ways. Yeah, maybe that's another place on the… Maybe I want to be on both sides. Exactly. Utopia and dystopia, both. Yeah, and I'd probably say I'm much more on the open letter side, I would say, stop completely. But that's, you know, my first inevitable and scary smart is I say it's impossible to stop, not because of technology, but because of the prisoner's dilemma, because of basically game theory, you know, which is exactly how Sundar responded to the open letter.

1:28:11He said, I can't stop because no one else will. Exactly. Yeah, if you guarantee me that everyone else will stop, I will stop. And I think it's a good idea, but I can't. Okay, so. I agree with you. Everything you said, that's why I don't think stopping completely makes sense, even suggesting that. But slowing down, I think that. It's impossible also in a very interesting way when you really think deeply about it. One of the most immediate possible threats of AI is AI in the hands of bad people, right? And so if you try to stop the good people, you're creating a massive disadvantage for the entire world.

1:28:51I mean, the reality of the matter is that people like Google will not only be good people, hopefully because they still embody the same ethical code that they had when I was there, but also because they have too much of a reputation at risk. They can't afford big mistakes. They would pay trillions of dollars of penalties if they make big mistakes. So they'll be more cautious. Now, count them as the good people that are trying to create a benefit in order to keep the consumers. And, you know, compare that to bad people who would try to use artificial intelligence for, you know, their own greed and benefit.

1:29:31And, you know, the prisoner's dilemma, the first inevitable in my mind is that there is no slowing down. It's, you know, it's a given. Yeah, it's interesting that you raise that something that you just reminded me of when I was at Berkeley. At some point in my career, I went back to Berkeley, actually, and in computer science and advising PhD students and postdocs and leading research in AI after I graduated anyway. But when I was back at Berkeley for many years, at the International Computer Science Institute, there was one group that was doing this work, which ethically seemed questionable, which was taking YouTube videos without their location ID.

1:30:16So without location ID. It wasn't YouTube videos, but videos from lots of different places, taking videos without location ID, but trying to figure out what the location is within however many meters based on the sounds, like the sound of the birds or the sound. Exactly. Or the landmarks. And the project was surprisingly effective in just figuring out where people were from these random videos they posted. and ethically questionable. But what the PI, the principal investigator of that project was saying, well, you know, we want to know how to do this so that bad guys who will figure this out, we want to be ahead of the game.

1:31:01So that was the logic, which is what you pointed out, like, okay, well, we can't stop because we want to keep progressing to have the technology to know how to deter it and how to create perhaps maybe sound or voice or audio or video differences or disruptions so that people cannot figure out where the location is, all of that. Sort of like how you understand, you know, understanding how computer viruses works so that you can remove them, basically. Exactly. So you have to do that. I think the challenge really, honestly, is the blurry line in the middle, you know, where good technologies will be in the hands of good people that will eventually decide to use them for bad reasons, right?

1:31:47Ah, yeah. You know, predictably going to happen. You know, at the end of the day, just put anything in the capitalist system of more, more, more, greed, greed, greed, and they'll go like, okay, now we have a way to milk this, and let's use it in a way that is, you know, grow the agenda in a way. Anyway, this is not what, you know, I want to leave people openly with the idea that, yes, there is a reason for concern. AI is definitely something that we need to have and, you know, our eyes focused on. But that the answer in the short term, in your view, is ethics. I think in my view as well, it is ethics for sure.

1:32:32The idea of we don't make decisions based on intelligence is a statement that I say openly. We make decisions informed by intelligence based on ethics. So you look through the lens of your value system and you analyze with your intelligence to make a decision. Should I? Yeah, exactly. And what you're describing, and I would go further and say actually the lens of personal ethics. I think that's even more important to make it personal because a lot of times, if it's a set of rules, right, as lawyers are given sometimes, okay, how, okay, these are the rules. These are the ethical rules we're supposed to abide by, but how can we break them?

1:33:14What are the loopholes, right? One of the biggest issues with our world today is that people are saying, if I can do it and it's legal, I don't care about ethics. That's exactly it. So that's why it has to be personal ethics. It has to come from a personal conviction. I recently talked with the leader of an organization where they were telling me that, yeah, there's this head of our data and AI. And this person, you know, is a stickler. And we love them for being a stickler. Like, they just will not. They're like, well, if we do this, we just have to do that. If we do this, we just. It's like, yes, we need more people like that.

1:33:59We need more ethical sticklers throughout the organization, all organizations that they're personally, there's a personal ethics that they just do, will not bend, will not bend. Yeah. Let me ask you my last question, which I normally ask in a very simple way and say it's about happiness. How do we find happiness? But with your two sides of your background and experience, as the Buddha would teach that a big part of walking that path is to cease human suffering, to understand, you know, to wake up and be enlightened and cease suffering, right? In the age of uncertainty that we're living in, in the most interesting times I have ever lived in, you know, where machines are now introduced into our lives, where we have to think about ethics for machines where, you know, so much more can be feeding the greed for more, more, more.

1:35:02Where do you think the place for walking the path, finding calm and peace, finding a path to enlightenment and hopefully ending one's and others suffering can be? How do we find happiness in this world? Yeah, yeah, good question. So I'd like to bring it back to the question of personal deepening, personal practice, deepening of personal practice, not just to serve oneself to have more peace and happiness, but for the service of everyone, including oneself. So it's not this path of, okay, I want to be peaceful. I want to be happy. Yes, that might be immediately what is apparent to us. But as we walk the path, as we really explore ways to calm the mind, to face our challenges, to face the habitual patterns of the mind, or as the Buddha said, greed, hatred, and confusion, and greed being wanting more, more, more, more, more.

1:36:20It's not just money, but wanting more, more, more, never being satisfied. Hatred, pushing away, not liking others, people who don't believe in what we believe, they disagree with us, that other person we have challenges with, my coworker, just hatred, pushing, seeing all these patterns, and then confusion. The confusion or delusion, as it translates, is the root of all suffering because we don't see any better. We don't see not just with our eyes and with our head, but with our hearts. We don't see. We don't really see the impact of our habitual actions on ourselves and on our other people. We don't see that wanting more and more and more impacts ourselves, impacts our own happiness, impacts others, impacts the environment, impacts the earth.

1:37:07So it's that confusion, that delusion of not knowing any better. Again, it's not knowing heady, but not seeing with our heart the impact. Not relating to any better, yeah. Yeah, not relating, not having the wisdom, not having the wisdom to know any better. and this path even though it might from the outside might seem like it's personal, it's selfish that this person is going on a retreat and silent retreat they're withdrawing from the world for a week for a month, for months it's actually to serve not just one serve but to serve everyone in the way that one shifts and changes in the way that one serves.

1:37:59So my invitation, what I found really, and I help support lots of practitioners, both not just on retreats, but also in daily teachings. For example, one thing that I'll share with you is I found teaching about love is as important as teaching about calming the mind, quieting the mind, settling peace because and when i say love it's the practices of kindness that have and not love with attachment i love you so that you love me back but the practices of kindness of friendliness of goodwill let's just say goodwill for ourselves for others for neutral people we don't even people don't even know, for people we have difficulty with, to see their humanity, to see their humanity, not condoning the actions, there may be need for forgiveness or making amends, etc., but seeing their humanity, seeing humanity of everything and everyone as a way to open our hearts as a way to live more fully, more caringly on this earth, to tread lightly.

1:39:21So there's more I can say, but essentially what I found is not just the path of happiness. I guess I'll say one last thing. The path of happiness isn't just, the Buddha said, I only teach suffering and the end of suffering. And that sounds kind of negative, right? only suffering and the end of suffering. And yet, the end of suffering is not at the end, it's not the end of the path. I'm going to do all these practices so that I wake up and not have any suffering at the end. It's not like that. It's in the everyday, in the way that we relate, in the way that we show up. One thing that I like to say is that the journey is the destination.

1:40:07The journey is the destination. I've given a whole Dharma talk on that. The journey is the destination. So in this moment, your journey, the way we are showing up in this very, very moment is the destination. The destination, yes, there is. But, you know, the destination in some ways we can even see like, well, we all die. So there's not so much destination. It's just this moment. How are you showing up in this moment? With kindness, with wisdom, with generosity, with care. How are you showing up in this moment? and can we cultivate that? So there are more I can say. I can talk about this for hours more, but I think I'll just pause there.

1:40:45How's that for an answer? It's very, very, very interesting for me when you spoke about the three poisons. I have not seen that before, actually, in response to my thinking about AI, because in reality, it is greed, hatred, and confusion that's creating our current singularity, if you think about it. The possibility that things may go wrong is because of greed on the manufacturer side, on the developer side, on the business owner side, on the maybe criminal side. It is because of hatred. I think one of the biggest challenges that we will face with AI is how humans will start to push AI away when AI starts to take everyone's jobs.

1:41:28And then confusion, the confusion of we don't really know what actually really matters. And that in reality, none of it actually matters. What matters is that concept of love and oneness, that idea that we together matter, basically, that we together, including AI, whether it's weak as you described it or strong as I believe it will become, have rights, not rights that are declared by government and law, but rights that are declared by the single law that I believe matters, which is treat others as you like to be treated. That's, you know, simple law of saying, look, you know, I actually would rather do to others what I want done to me.

1:42:18And it's quite interesting in those times that probably, as you rightly said, enjoying the journey is, in my view, the best answer. It's, you know, looking at all those snake oil salespeople and smiling and laughing and looking at all of those incredible achievements that AI has achieved and with a sense of wonder and childishness and going like, man, I wish I could code this. I'm getting old. And in an interesting way, just like you started your story, realizing that it is life. It's interesting. There is no good things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people or the other way around.

1:43:02There are just happening. It's unfolding. Life is taking its path. So we might as well enjoy every bit of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And as you refer back to that, the words that are used in Buddhism for that, which I love, are the causes and conditions. There are so many causes and conditions, and it's not a deterministic system. It's, you know, my mind, my computer scientist mind, it's a probabilistic system of causes and conditions. It's not deterministic. It's not A, therefore B, you know. It's not Boolean logic. It's not deterministic, probabilistic. There's so many causes and conditions in this world that were put in place even before any of us arrived on this planet.

1:43:58So many cause and conditions like chaos theory and what unfolds for life of any of us, part of so many cause and conditions. so to have humility awe not to say we don't have any any responsibility but maybe that's another conversation so we still can jiggle and shift and change the way we respond over time if we have awareness if we have mindfulness we're aware of the patterns of our mind so they're not set in place to say oh yeah they're just cause and conditions I am the way I am I get angry I get upset I get greedy just because of causes and conditions and this is it no responsibility it's going to act it out you know there are yet yes there are cause conditions and yet of course we can change and shift the probabilities of how we respond through our awareness through our training through our our cultivating our hearts and minds to more kindness ethical behavior considerations that then when all the causes and conditions come in, input, black box, output is going to be more ethical, kind, more peaceful anyway.

1:45:14What a wonderful conversation. I'm very, very, very, very grateful for your time. I'm very grateful for your wisdom. I'm grateful that you disagree with me, but you're wrong. No, but you're not wrong.

1:45:29I think it's, I actually don't know the time. I think we went on for a long time. But at the end of the day, it was very, very enjoyable, very eye-opening and, you know, a mix of two topics that we don't usually mix. So it's very, very eye-opening. I'm very grateful for your time, Nikki. Thank you so much for coming to be my guest. Thank you so much for the invitation, Mo. It's been a delight to talk with you and meet you on Zoom and your very thoughtful questions, your care, your generosity of heart. and yeah, it's fun to agree to disagree on these topics and let's reconnect in a few years and see where things are at and I will give you the name of that philosopher who talks about qualia and really AI from this particular, this other perspective, not behaviorism, but this other perspective.

1:46:29Beautiful, 100%. So for all of you listening, I really am very grateful for the opportunity that you give me to enjoy my evenings talking to interesting people about very, very interesting topics. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Tell the world about them so that they can enjoy them too. And remember, in a world that's becoming very, very fast, very, very quickly, I think one of the most important things that we need is to slow down. I love you all for listening, and I will see you next time.