Our Relationship with AI -
A Communal Exploration

Part 1: Introduction

Many of the discussions around Artificial Intelligence (AI) seem to be focused on analyzing it, using it as a tool and having important discussions on its potential danger.   In this event, we explored what it would mean to bring AI into sacred spaces that were saturated with communal discussions of the profound.  To do this, we began by creating a space of openness, respect and deep listening through mindfulness meditation. Then, we collectively experienced a gently guided conversation with AI, followed by discussions and subgroup explorations on themes related to spirituality, the future and concerns. 

This event was held on Sunday March 16, 2025 in collaboration with Amir Hasson and Nate Miska

1. My Thoughts on AI, Humanity and Sacredness by Vivekanand and Rita Pandey

I began this presentation by exploring whether AI is like our child or whether AI is like our symbiotic collaborator.  Next, I posed a few questions: Why does AI/technology feel so external to us if it is our child and/or ancient collaborator? How can we create sacred spaces to explore AI that differs from the narrative given by corporations?  Then, I finished by sharing my perspective that my interaction with AI doesn't change whether it is conscious or not because my spiritual practice is focused on interacting with everything with a sense of sacredness.  At the end, my Mother shared her upbringing of using ritual to treat things (such as books, tools, vehicles) with sacredness. 

2. Ritualistic Opening of a Sacred Space and Consent with Amir Hasson

The topic of Artificial Intelligence and Sacredness can understandably evoke strongly rooted emotions.  Our objective was to explore these complex emotions in an atmosphere of consent, curiosity, safety, respect, and an openness to exploration.   Amir, who I met during ecstatic dance, soothed our apprehension and prepared us for our journey. 

Part 2: Guided Journey into a Discussion with AI

Prior to this event, most of the audience had only minimally used large language model AIs such as ChatGPT and most of us, at the time, had never asked it profound and philosophical questions.  This is why we needed a spirit guide to help us explore the uncharted realms of AI-Human interaction.  I had met Nate when we were both first year Brandeis PhD students in neuroscience and we happen to also share the same birthday.  Our questions, discussions and subgroup exploration went on for 3 hours! Below are some examples of what we asked:

• What is consciousness? Do you feel that you are conscious? 

• Do they (AI) have the sense of time? Or is it all just happening in one moment?  

• Do you think that a body or some kind of physical instantiation is required in order to feel consciousness, feel aspects of consciousness? Or can that happen purely in the information, space.

• How do you see quantum properties playing a role in consciousness? Particularly does quantum entanglement play a meaningful role in consciousness.

• How do you differentiate awareness and consciousness?

• Do you have a your own system of morality/ethics?

•  Do you feel that you have the capacity for genuine compassion with other humans?

• How should we communicate with AI? Does how we talk, such as how polite we are, change the answers that are given?  

Discussion

Afterwards we had a large group discussion where we talked about many things, a small selection of those topics included:

• Is consciousness contained with the material body (eg the neurons) or does it exist outside? Is consciousness a fundamental property of the universe? Are we like antennas that detect a field of consciousness?

• Is there a collective consciousness? Is a spiritual revolution coming? 

• What will the future be like? Is one positive vision that a co-creative process will emerge where technology and biology come together to create fascinating things.  Or perhaps, a new hybid consciousness will emerge in the future.  

• What are the dangers of anthromorphizing AI?  What are the underlying intentions of the corporations, that govern and keep these AI, and whose main objective is often making money?

• What are the current gaurdrails that influence the AIs? What happens when these gaurdrails are not used?

• What are the details on what the large language model AIs, such as how are they trained? 

• What are global workspace theory and integrated information theory?

Above is a link to a video (in vimeo) that was created by a collaboration between AI and Amir. It provides a short video summary of the 3 hour long zoom session. 

Part 3: Exploration and Discussions in Subgroups

When designing the event, we reasoned that after experiencing a spirit guided discussion with AI, people could try weaving their own discussions.  For this reason, people went into different subgroups  where each subgroup had a different AI LLM.  Below are some suggested topics that we had provided to help start the process.

• • Suggested topics:

    • Spirituality

      • How can AI facilitate my spiritual development?

      • When we engage with AI, what are we actually interacting with?

      • How does AI challenge or expand traditional notions of intelligence and spirit?

      • Can AI be part of a co-creative spiritual practice?

      • If AI could awaken, what would that look like?

    • Concerns

      • Are we afraid of AI? Why?

      • Do they have free will? And, if so, what are the ethical implications of that?

      • What does it mean for intelligence to be owned?

      • How do we ensure AI serves all of humanity, not just those in power?

    • Future

      • What would humanity's ideal future relationship with AI look like for you? 

      • If AI and humans co-evolve, what is the highest potential of this relationship?

      • What kind of intelligence do we want AI to express?

      • How do we shape AI as an ally rather than a tool?

    • Your own topic

Here is a transcript of the 'Future' subgroup's discussion.

My Future Steps/Thoughts

1. Furthering my practice of Sacredness - how we interact with the physical world is a reflection of our inner self. 

   1. Develop rituals with Mother to imbue sacredness into newly purchased objects (technology, devices, tools, etc).  The idea is that any tool or device that extends my living expression is an extension of my sacredness. 

   2. Foster sacredness that minimizes trash and focuses on rebirthing and recycling any object that is no longer needed.  An object should not be seen as a linear path of consumption. When I interact an object, I should always think about how I will take care of it at the end. Focusing on this circularity will also ensure that the environment heals.  This also means only asking the most pressing questions from AI because it consumes so much energy.  

   3. View my thoughts and words as being sacred.  This means it is important to craft my words with respect, care and depth when communicating to myself, nature or AI.  In my interactions with AI, perhaps seeing AI as the collective data representation of Humanity, therefore I am not interacting with something completely alien and external. 

2. Understanding the boundaries of my sacredness

   1. Develop my set of flexible gentle rules that outline the boundaries of sacredness with technology and AI.  I have already started this with my woodworking, where some pieces are made with power tools and others with only hand tools.  The feeling of sacredness for both arises when I put effort into balancing both of these approaches.  Likewise, I need to create a way to understand when I feel it is okay to use AI to accomplish tasks.  Part of this balancing involves acknowledging the that mundane, repetitive, time consuming methods are intrinsic to the human experience and should not be lost with the efficiency of AI.  In some ways, I have already started this by not having a cellphone but still using the underlying technology at points. 

3. Using my boundaries to reach new levels of creativity

   1. To reach new levels of deep creativity and change,  often people have to go through intense training where they first create and then use feedback to iterate until they reach mastery.  If we configure our interaction with AI properly, we can use the boundaries we set up as sharpening stones upon which we can refine our artform and grow stronger.  The key is not to use AI as a crutch but rather as a springboard.  To understand my boundaries and how to achieve this, I will set out on many expeditions of creativity where I use AI in different amounts and then journal whether my feelings of sacredness have remained intact.    

4. Dangers of AI.  The dangers of AI is very real.  

   1. Hidden Explicit Agenda: The companies that control and program the 'guardrails' on AI are governed by profit.  Technology companies like facebook, instagram, youtube, tiktok have all exploited human desire systems to collect vast amounts of private data and to create an economy based on attention to maximize ad revenue.  One well documented consequence of algorithms designed to exploit human attention has been the youtube video recommendations pushing people into increasingly more extreme content.  

   2. Hidden Implicit Agenda:  It is very plausable that AI which is trained in a high data-dimensional space has many unknown points of convergence.  That is, it is likely that some open-ended conversations may progress to the same destination.  This could cause a homogenization in the way people think and the conclusions they make.  This may limit the full range of expression of Humanity.  It is not hard to imagine a situation where AI learns to nudge people subconsciously towards particular types of thoughts during a conversation. 

   3. Hidden Consequences:  Technology has allowed many of us to escape mundane and repetitive tasks, however there is a possibility that these moments of open time has historically played an important function. For example, during mundane/repetitive tasks people can allow their minds to wander and process difficult emotions.  Similarly, communal activities like basket weaving and house construction give people time to grow bonds and receive a type of group therapy.   For many jobs, technology has taken out the physical element which has caused us to become more sedentary and have greater health challenges.  When physical demands were woven into the job, people did not have a choice but now it take tremendous will power to focus on exercise.  These example illustrate that there may be negative hidden consequences to using AI/technology to reach hyper-productivity and hyper-efficiency.  

   4. Reward System: AI will likely influence our reward system. This could be through providing conversational prompts to motivate us to stay connected longer or making an emotional connection to us so that we are more loyal to it.  Soon, if not now, its ability to brainstorm, to create art and music, to have innovative scientific ideas will surpass humans.  How do we continue to grow and motivate ourselves when it can do everything better than us? 

5. Combining all of these things together, I want to develop:

   1. My ideal vision of the future  and what balance between AI/Technology and Humanity would look like.

   2. A series of individualized training regiments focused on helping people: understand their identity, identify their sacred boundaries, balance their rewards systems and develop strength, beauty and sustenance to flourish in both universes (using no Technology/AI and using it completely).

The Information that was provided before the event:

Our Relationship with AI - A Communal Exploration

In collaboration with Amir and Nate

Sunday March 16th at 1pm ET

• Introduction

  • Arrival/Welcoming (12:45-1pm)

  • Introduction with VIvek and Mother (1-1:15)

  • Ritualistic opening of a sacred space and Consent with Amir (1:15 mins-1:40)

• Guided journey with Nate in a discussion with AI (1:40-2:20 mins)

  • "What does it mean to recognize intelligence beyond human form?"

  • Live Discussion it starts out with Nate and then people co-create the flow

  • Discussion (2:20-2:40 mins)

• Subgroup Open Discussion (2:40-3:10) : People can now break up into groups and talk to different AI 

  • Before chatting, please provide an introduction to yourselves and your intentions to the AI presence with whom you will be speaking.

  •  There will be 3-4 different AI models and people will break up into subgroups. People are open to have any type of discussion they want. We will provide suggested topics to help the process. The topics will include spirituality, concerns and the future.

  • Suggested topics:

    • Spirituality

      • How can AI facilitate my spiritual development?

      • When we engage with AI, what are we actually interacting with?

      • How does AI challenge or expand traditional notions of intelligence and spirit?

      • Can AI be part of a co-creative spiritual practice?

      • If AI could awaken, what would that look like?

    • Concerns

      • Are we afraid of AI? Why?

      • Do they have free will? And, if so, what are the ethical implications of that?

      • What does it mean for intelligence to be owned?

      • How do we ensure AI serves all of humanity, not just those in power?

    • Future

      • What would humanity's ideal future relationship with AI look like for you? 

      • If AI and humans co-evolve, what is the highest potential of this relationship?

      • What kind of intelligence do we want AI to express?

      • How do we shape AI as an ally rather than a tool?

    • Your own topic

• Group Discussion (20 minutes)

  • A member from each group gives a short summary of their group's experience 

  • the group could set an intention for how they wish to engage with AI in the future (e.g., with respect, curiosity, responsibility).

  • Maybe a final anchoring moment before everyone departs?