Angel Acosta: Contemplation, Healing, and AI

03/02/24 • 43 min

We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Dr. Angel Acosta, an expert on healing-centered education and leadership. Angel runs the Acosta Institute which helps communities process trauma and build environments for people to thrive.

He also facilitates leadership programs at the Garrison Institute that support the next generation of contemplative leaders. With his background in social sciences, curriculum design, and adult education, Angel has been thinking deeply about how artificial intelligence intersects with mindfulness, social justice and education.

In our conversation, we explore how AI can help or hinder our capacity for contemplation and healing. For example, does offloading cognitive tasks to AI tools like GPT create more mental space for mindfulness? How do we ensure these technologies don’t increase anxiety and threaten our sense of self?

We also discuss the promise and perils of AI for transforming education. What roles might AI assistants play in helping educators be more present with students? How can we design assignments that account for AI without compromising learning? What would a decolonized curriculum enabled by AI look like?

And we envision more grounded, humanistic uses of rapidly evolving AI—from thinking of it as "ecological technology" interdependent with the natural world, to leveraging its pattern recognition in service of collective healing and wisdom. What guiding principles do we need for AI that enhances both efficiency and humanity? How can we consciously harness it to create the conditions for people and communities to thrive holistically?

We’d like to thank our friends at the House of Beautiful Business for sparking our relationship with Angel—we highly recommend you check out their events and join their community.

Let’s dive into our conversation with Angel Acosta.

About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards:

Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world.

We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives.

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Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world.

#ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai

We’d like to thank our friends at the House of Beautiful Business for sparking our relationship with Angel—we highly recommend you check out their events and join their community.

Let’s dive into our conversation with Angel Acosta.

About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards:

Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world.

If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds.

Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠

Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email

Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠

Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world.

#ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai

Previous Episode

Doug Belshaw: Serendipity Surface & AI

We're excited to welcome Doug Belshaw to the show today. Doug is a founding member of the We Are Open Co-op which helps organizations with sensemaking and digital transformation.

Doug coined the term "serendipity surface" to describe cultivating an attitude of curiosity and increasing the chance encounters we have by putting ourselves out there. We adopted the term quite some time ago and were eager to talk with Doug about how he thinks about serendipity surfaces in the age of generative AI.

As former Head of Web Literacy at Mozilla and now currently pursuing a master's degree in systems thinking, Doug has a wealth of knowledge on topics spanning education, technology, productivity and more. In our conversation today, we'll explore concepts like productive ambiguity, cognitive ease, and rewilding your attention. Doug shares perspectives from his unique career journey as well as personal stories and projects exemplifying the creative potential of AI. We think you’ll find this a thought-provoking discussion on human-AI collaboration, lifelong learning, digital literacy, ambiguity, and the future of work. Let’s dive into our conversation with Doug Belshaw.

Key points:

Doug coined the term Serendipity Surface to describe cultivating curiosity, increasing random encounters and possibilities by putting ourselves out there. He sees it as the opposite of reducing "attack surface" in security; it's about expanding opportunities.
Doug shares an example of prompting ChatGPT extensively over 24 hours with a flood risk report, personas and perspectives to decide on a complex house purchase. This shows the creative potential of using AI tools to augment human thinking and decisions.
Doug discusses the sweet spot of productive ambiguity where concepts resonate with a common meaning yet leave room for interpretation by individuals based on their contexts. It encourages engagement and spreading of ideas.
As an educator, Doug advocates thoughtfully adopting emerging tech to develop engaged, literate and curious learners rather than reactively banning tools. Friction facilitates learning.
Ultimately, Doug sees potential for AI collaboration that brings our humanity, empathy, creativity and curiosity to the forefront if we prompt and apply these tools judiciously.

Links for Doug Belshaw:

About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards:

Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world.

If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds.

Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠

Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email

Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠

Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world.

#ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai

Next Episode

Susannah Fox: Rebel Health

We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Susannah Fox, a renowned researcher who has spent over 20 years studying how patients and caregivers use the internet to gather information and support each other. Susannah has collected countless stories from the frontlines of healthcare and has keen insights into how patients are stepping into their power to drive change.

Susannah recently published a book called "Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care." In it, she introduces four key personas that represent different ways patients and caregivers are shaking up the status quo in healthcare: seekers, networkers, solvers, and champions.

The book aims to bridge the divide between the leaders at the top of the healthcare system and the patients, survivors, and caregivers on the ground who often have crucial information and ideas that go unnoticed. By profiling examples of patient-led innovation, Susannah hopes to inspire healthcare to become more participatory.

In our conversation, we dive into the insights from Susannah's decades of research, hear some compelling stories of patients, and discuss how medicine can evolve to embrace the power of peer-to-peer healthcare. As you’ll hear, this is a highly personal episode as Susannah’s work resonates with both of us and our individual and shared health experiences.

Let’s dive into our conversation with Susannah Fox.

About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards:

Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world.

If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds.

Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠

Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email

Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠

Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world.

#ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai