The Disruptive CEO—Why Do Silicon Valley Founders Behave So Badly?

The San Francisco Bay Area has been taken over by the cult of “Radical Disruption.” Everywhere I turn I see a new elite college drop-out founding the latest, greatest tech startup that will totally disrupt life as we know it, and make someone a shitload of money, with a workforce of only rock star, ninja programmers and slick, hip PR guys and gals who will remake the world, while also completely fudging the numbers and harassing every employee that comes through their doors. I imagine we can blame it on Steve Jobs, but the leaders of the cult of “Radical Disruption” around here are startup CEOs, worshipped like gurus for their guts, their genius and their ability to both be super cool and create radical new workplaces while totally DISRUPTING some commercial space AND attending Burning Man and Coachella Music Fest each year.

I don’t mean to sound snarky. Both of my teen-aged sons inform me on a regular basis that I’m not funny and thus snark is way out of my element. However, as I watch the world of technology from my seat in the sleepy Santa Cruz Mountains to the south of Silicon Valley, all I can do is wonder, “Who the hell are these people?”

I get it, I’m old. But not that old. I mean, I didn’t have to program using punch cards. I actually learned to write code using an actual keyboard. To give some perspective, I’m only five years older than Uber Founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick, so I’m not sure we’re of dramatically different generations. Yet I’m astounded by the allegations that show up in my newsfeed everyday about him, and many others, that live and work just over the hill from me. They have come to power and what do they do with it? Use it to disrupt EVERYTHING, and I don’t mean the actual commercial space they occupy, but the lives of the employees and investors that prop up the very dream they seem to think is their divine calling.

Let’s begin with Travis Kalanick, the Uber CEO, who has been accused of spying on former employees who have dared to sue him,  tagging iPhones even after its app had been deleted and the devices erased — a fraud detection maneuver that violated Apple’s privacy guidelines, creating a workplace rife with sexual harassment where female employees weren’t given the same black leather jacket reward because there weren’t enough women in the department to get a group discount. And my favorite? Alphabet’s Waymo lawsuit against Otto (purchased by Uber) for allegedly stealing the design of a key self-driving system.

Wow. You get to be CEO of a company about to IPO while all this shit is hitting the fan? Travis Kalanick, you are sooooo lucky to be a rock star CEO in 2017. Seriously, because if you’d been the CEO of a company in the 1990’s, you’d be finished.

It appears that sexism exists all over Silicon Valley, but certainly not in a company founded by women, right? One would think that at Thinx, a company that makes period-proof underwear, things would be downright utopian for the ladies. Not so, and this story really breaks my heart. Meet Miki Agrawal, one of the cutest Valley CEOs and the founder of a company I completely adore. I use the Thinx period panties and while they’re a bit pricey, they’re a great technological feat. I wanted her company, and the brand she was selling, namely herself, to succeed. But that was not to be, and just a month ago sexual harassment charges were brought against a “SHE-E-O”!!!! Allegedly, Ms. Agrawal touched employee’s breasts, and demanded that one employee to let her look at the empolyee’s new nipple piercings in front of the male co-worker in her office. Ms. Agrawal also often changed into other clothes and period-proof undies in front of everyone in the office. In her post on Medium, Agrawal writes that her lawyers have found no evidence for these claims, however, the case is still open and awaiting trial, and she’s stepped down from her post of CEO. Of course, in another post on Medium, she details her adventures in the Orgy Dome at Burning Man while promoting her products, so, I guess that's okay for a CEO to reveal in public as well?

Now, for those reading this that live in the Midwest, Deep South, or even the East Coast, this is happening in California, the land of the free in more ways than you can think of. Nudity is common, I see it when I walk down the main street of my town, polyamory is in, and many women flirt and make-out with one another all the time. It’s cool, for some, you know? But in the workplace? No. It isn’t cool, even in Silicon Valley.

Sexual harassment, stealing trade secrets and spying, I imagine that’s what you have to do to be a successful CEO in the cult of “Radical Disruption” because that’s what venture capitalists are looking for.  But how about completely lying to investors about key metrics? Take Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, the blood-testing start-up that she started as a 19-year-oldStanford dropout, which was valued at some $9 billion. That was before the Wall Street Journal reported in October of 2016 her company was basically a sham and that Theranos used competitor’s products to do all of its testing because its own technology didn’t actually work.

Oh my. Holmes was a female self-made millionaire in a world of male dominance, and a shining light here in the Valley. She even wears nothing but black turtle necks, just like Steve Jobs. Theranos was going to disrupt the health care industry by providing lab work at a fraction of the cost. Yet when Ms. Holmes’ technology failed, rather than report it, she purchased competitor equipment and lied to her investors.

But Ms. Holmes, you’re not alone. Let me introduce you to Evan Spiegel, your male twin when it comes to hiding data from investors, and Snapchat’s founder and CEO, who not only said, according to a former employee, “This app is only for rich people. I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain,” his company also exaggerates Snapchat’s user data to keep top executives completely misinformed about key metrics. Now if you are an actual investor in Snapchat, Evan wants to assure you that these metrics are really no big deal, honestly, they're not, because in the end lying to your investors is also part of the cult of “Radical Disruption.”

All of this troubles me. I wonder, what will happen to our technology and our future when these types of people are considered glamorous and fit to found and run the companies that will define the future? Do business schools assign case studies on these innovators as a means to encourage their students to follow in their enlightened footsteps? Each one of these founders set out to create something new—a new way to hail rides, a new way to manage your period each month, a new way to administer blood tests, a new way to communicate with your friends. Yet each and every one has created a workplace of harassment, poor benefits, or lied to their investors and the public. Where did they learn how to do business? Who were their role models?

If companies are now being founded on the cult of “Radical Disruption” is it any wonder that everything—from workplace security to honesty in reporting data—is being disregarded? To disrupt means, “drastically alter or destroy the structure of (something).”

What do we lose when we encourage this next generation of leaders to destroy in the name of success, brilliance and destiny?

Personally, I expected more from my generation. Corruption is corruption, even if you attend Burning Man.

Hey Silicon Valley--I Have a Gender Equality Solution for Ya!

There has been a lot of talk for years about women in STEM, from trying to get girls to fall in love with science and technology, to getting women to stay in the workforce once they’re trained, a lot of time and effort has gone into studying this problem. Decades of research, funding and programs later and we still have an issue, almost 40% of women leave the field, yet we’re still not entirely sure why.

I applaud programs that seek to encourage females to enter STEM careers and stick with it. I myself have been lucky enough to have been a part of many. But there is one age group that no one is paying attention to: women in their middle age who majored in engineering, but took time off to raise children, that are now empty-nesters.

I know, I know. Why would anyone bother with a 45 y.o. woman, but hear me out. We spend money on programs to train young girls in the sciences, we spend money on programs to get young women to major in engineering. We spend tons of money trying to figure out how to keep them and support them as they raise their children. Yet that’s where it ends. If you chose to leave to raise your kids, you’re gone, forgotten, and let go. But many of those women are done raising kids, and only in their forties. Why not spend some money re-training them and getting them back into the lab?

According to PewResearch in 2014, 29% of women were stay-at-home-mothers. It’s hard to find the data to see how many of them were STEM majors, but of the 40% of women who leave STEM careers, about a quarter of them do so to raise families. This means they didn’t leave because they no longer love engineering, they just chose to take time to raise their kids.

Many of these women are now in their mid-forties and their kids are on the way to college, which leads me to wonder, just how expensive would it be to train these women to become coders and technology workers today? With all the coding bootcamps out there, as well as other retraining programs, why not recruit from this group of women to fill not only your technology needs, but also to balance gender in the workplace?

A few years back, Apple and other big-name companies began offering female employees money to freeze their eggs, with the idea that they can invest in their careers until their late thirties/early forties, and then begin their families. This goes hand-in-hand with the idea of “Sequencing," made popular by the book by Arleen Rosso Cardozo in the early nineties. The idea being that women can have it all, just maybe not all at once. This works for certain types of women, particularly those who enjoy diving deeply into their careers and find the work/family balance to be too difficult.

We all agree that a woman can begin her family at age forty, and that in some ways, she may make an even better parent than she would have when younger, given her life-experience. Then why not say the same about a woman in her forties and her career? If we’re physically and intellectually capable of handling an infant at forty, we’re certainly physically and intellectually capable of coding in our forties. Having done both, trust me, the infant is way more difficult.

So why not include Gen X female engineers who are done raising their families and ready to return to work in your recruitment plans? Why not spend some money retraining them, and growing your female base from this older stage of life, rather than only investing in young girls and college aged women?

To help get the conversation started, here are five reasons to consider recruiting Gen X engineers who are done raising their kids:

1.       They’re already in love with engineering! You don’t have to convince them math is beautiful, or that software rules the world, they already know this. As young girls they were interested in STEM fields and pursued them in college. They naturally have the mindset of an engineer, raising children doesn’t change that. And many of them have just spent twenty years or so raising their own engineers and science loving offspring, like Kim Moldofsky, The Maker Mom, and many of her website’s followers.

2.       They already have engineering degrees. True, the technology has changed, but most have a foundation in engineering, math or computer science. You might be coding in Javascript and Ruby, but C++ is still the sixth most popular language in GitHub, and most of these women have ten+ years using that language before they took time to raise their families. With this foundation, they can easily be trained how to write code using today’s tools and development environments.

3.       They know how to adult. I hate to say it, but it’s true. Women in their forties got their shit together, and they can manage a performance review just fine. In addition, they don’t suffer the same social media/Tinder/out of control rents/roommate issues that younger employees who are just launching from home are dealing with. A woman who has raised children to adulthood is the ultimate adult herself.

4.       They’re done raising kids. This is a big one, and both men and women wonder how to balance work and family. While we still need to continue the important work of bringing that balance to the workplace, many women in their forties are done with this part of their lives and find themselves empty nesters with lots of time to invest in their careers.

5.       They’re excellent program managers. Many educated SAHMs are deeply involved in their communities and often serve in executive roles on school boards, church leadership committees, and other clubs that their kids are involved in. Many also have blogs, write books, and share their love of technology on social media. They haven’t been lounging around eating bonbons the past twenty years, rather they’ve been putting their managerial and intellectual talents towards the next generation. This means that even though they might not have run an international software release in a while, they have for example, overseen the development of a new building for their kid’s school, or launched a new coding club for their kids, or even founded a soccer or gymnastics team. They drew upon their natural leadership skills to do this work, often for free, as a service to their children and the community at large. This capacity is a part of who they are, and all of those skills transfer to the latest apps being developed in the valley.

So there you have it Silicon Valley. Everyone knows you have a gender issue, and I applaud all of the nationwide programs that serve our girls and young women in this way. All I’m suggesting is taking a look at the 25% of Gen X engineers who left to raise their kids, and encouraging them to come back and be a part of the future of your business. What do you have to lose?

In Anticipation of the California Primary--Why Bernie Sanders is a Great Choice for Futurists!!!

Senator Bernie Sanders in Santa Cruz, CA 5/31/16. Photo cred Jillian Chelson

This week I had the honor of attending a small and intimate Bernie Sanders rally in Santa Cruz, California. I was impressed to say the least. Bernie is every bit as inspiring in person as he appears in his advertisements. And while his nomination from the Democratic Party still seems like a longshot, given the super delegate phenomenon, winning California is key to the longevity of his progressive movement.

“As goes California, so goes the nation.” We’re the western edge of civilization. I’ve lived here now for nine years and I must say, there’s no place else like it in the entire country. California is leading the way on environmental stewardship, health care, film, music, entertainment and of course, technology. Silicon Valley is where the future is born. With the California Primary in only a few days, I thought it was important to re-print an article I wrote a few weeks ago about why futurists should consider Bernie Sanders for president.

Futurists are often seen as Libertarian or Republican, but many of those I’ve met here in California seem to also be quite progressive. They care about technology as well as the health of the planet. They want to automate our lives, but are concerned about technological unemployment and seek alternative monetary systems such as universal basic income.

California is filled with people with an eye to the future, and it’s to them that I now write my plea—next week you’ll have a choice, Hillary or Bernie. Which will you choose?

Government’s job is to protect the people. Most think that only means foreign policy. But to this I’d add investing in the infrastructure that enables our society to thrive and navigate the huge economic changes of the Information Age. For make no mistake, what domestic policies we chose to implement right now will determine what type of digital world we live in. One in which all of our society benefits from the technological advancements, or one in which only a few hold all the keys and the rest are left to fend for themselves. Because like it or not, while the rest of America is fighting about gays, abortion, guns and nationalism, technology is progressing and trust me, none of those things will matter one bit in the next evolution of humanity.

After looking at all the candidates, I came to a surprising conclusion—that an old socialist from Vermont is actually the best candidate at this point in time when it comes to furthering our advancement as a technological society. He might not even understand half of what’s happening in Silicon Valley or NASA, but his platform contains some important things for all futurists to consider. And yes, many futurists do make more than $250,000 a year, so they might not like to hear what Bernie has to say. But before you vote merely to keep your taxes lower, please, if you care at all about the technological advancement of our world, consider Bernie for the following three reasons.

1.      Bernie is against nuclear war and for reduced military spending

We are now at the point that technically, we could annihilate this planet. That we haven’t yet is miraculous. We are officially our own greatest threat. Nuclear disarmament is more important than ever, as well as the reigning in of military spending and investment in artificially intelligent drones and soldier-robots. In his article in Politico Magazine, Lawrence Hobbs says this about Bernie, “Twenty-five years after the Cold War, there is…no need to spend a trillion dollars to modernize our nuclear arsenal, and Sanders has even pledged to cut $100 billion in nuclear spending over the next decade. Instead the United States should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Sanders told me he would push for, in order to ban all nuclear explosions in all environments, for both military and civilian purposes.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/bernie-sanders-foreign-poicy-213619#ixzz3zzqITgiZ

As a very practical man reminded me on FB thread, “Avoiding nuclear war is the most important thing we can vote for.” I’d also add that reducing the amount of money spent by our government on all technologies of destruction is a part of that. Bernie is absolutely for both of these things.

2.       Bernie is for universal health care, inexpensive higher education and has even said that a universal basic income is something to consider

If all our citizens have access to health care and education as well as a basic income for food and shelter, then our technology is freed from the economic constraints that currently hold it back. Why are we still using dirty coal? Because of jobs. Those in the industry won’t let go because they can’t care for their families without their income. This is but one example. But imagine if they didn’t have to fear. If instead when one technology makes an older one obsolete, the worker won’t starve or end up on the street, but instead will continue to live and have care and be able to afford to go back to school and retrain to the new technology? What a different world it would be if when a life-saving technology is invented, all can have access to it because our health care system works in our favor, not for profits. Any technically advanced society would use its ingenuity to solve the problems of homelessness, hunger and health, and Bernie’s policies can be seen as a path in this direction. It will take a lot of hard work for us to move from our profit-driven economics to one where technology is used to provide the most basic needs to all of us at the least cost, but the time to start is now and Bernie’s campaign is forcing us to begin the discussion.

Why would a futurist care at all that everyone is provided for? Because technology is intimately linked to a work-less future—one in which automation will eliminate millions of jobs, with nothing new to replace them. This means an unemployment rate never seen before. To me, it’s a matter of national security that we ensure ALL our citizens are cared for and that our humanity is sacred and worthy of such an investment. Too many unemployed and impoverished people, and America spirals into third world status. Bob Marley put it so well, “A hungry man is an angry man.” Within thirty years we will either have a plethora of hungry, angry men, or we’ll have the infrastructure in place to ensure health care, food, housing and education for all. I’d rather remain a first world country than resist helping one another.

3.       Bernie is not affiliated with religion

This is pretty huge. There’s never been a real contender for the American presidency who wasn’t affiliated with Christianity. I want to be clear, I’m not an atheist and do have a spiritual practice, but I also believe that organized religion is behind many of the dire issues we face in our world. Most wars are fought with a belief that we are agents of God cleaning up civilization. Apocalypse politics are practiced both within US foreign policy as well as within terrorist groups such as ISIS.

In addition, religious fundamentalism is generally against technology. Scientists throughout the centuries have been silenced by those whose Gods don’t approve of their findings. This is a problem that we can no longer afford to tolerate. Humanity can and will destroy the planet if it continues to operate under the concept of Divine Manifestation. The separation of church and state ensures liberty for all. The freedom to practice a religious devotion of your choice without fear of being burned at the stake. The freedom to practice family planning and birth control (if you’re a woman). The freedom to pursue science, not with wild evil abandonment, but with rational, moral and logical eyes and without the fear of oh, yes, being burned at the stake. That our leaders still have to pass some Christian God litmus test should no longer be happening in the 21^st century.

A technically advanced society hasn’t lost their wonder and awe with nature, the cosmos or even the divine, but they have lost their need for religious dogma that controls their lives and tells them how to live.

I know, Bernie isn’t perfect and I wish he would have run as a third party and not within the corrupt binary primary system. But for futurists, he’s actually a very good choice. He’s the only candidate who has respect for the harm and destruction of the military industrial complex as well as organized religion in our world. Combined with his desire to use our technology to wisely care for all of us with regards to education and health care, I think he’s the one to help us take the next steps in excellence. This is not creating a nanny state—rather Bernie’s policies help us prepare for that time when our technology takes us into the post-work future. If we ignore these very important issues, we do so at our own peril.

Universal Basic Income—The Foundation of a Technically Advanced Society

With the announcements that Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Mark Rubio are running in the 2016 Presidential Primaries, it appears election season is well underway. As usual, many topics will be discussed, but there are many other important policies that will be left untouched. The scripted, binary world of American Politics leaves out much of importance during its process, preferring instead to emphasize fear tactics as a means of garnering votes.

One of the more important issues on the table for me is Universal Basic Income. This is not welfare, or assistance, or social security. This is a guarantee that every single human being in our society has shelter, food and health care. UBI is a call to finally use our technology to provide the most basic needs to all our citizens.

It isn’t altruism that drives me to the viewpoint that human life is important enough to protect. It’s pragmatism, and I believe that futurists need to consider UBI as an important step to achieving a more prosperous and technologically advanced society.

Welfare Isn’t Only For the Poor

The system of welfare, social security and other social support systems that we currently employ are based on the desire for those who have, to lord over those who don’t. Layers upon layers of administration exists for the sole purpose of deciding who is worthy of support, who is actually needy enough, and who can be given help. Each year we heap on more requirements, the most recent being restrictions on buying steak and salmon with food stamps. This behavior is inherently childish. It supposes that some of us are better than others. 

Here’s a very simple suggestion: what if we got rid of EVERY safety net, from SNAP to Social Security to Unemployment, and pooled that money together to create a guaranteed minimum income of $30,000 to be paid to every living American, eighteen and older. In addition, we cut our military spending and add that money to the pool as well.

Now many will say, $30K!!! That’s outrageous. But remember, one war in Iraq has cost us TRILLIONS, so please don’t say we don’t have enough money. In addition, all the administrative costs of lording over the current assistance programs, i.e. deciding who is worthy of help, go away. Now there are only two qualifications for receiving assistance: Are you alive? Are you over 18? Done.

This is for everyone. Hillary’s grandchildren will get $30K a year as well as the immigrant’s child. ALL are worthy of welfare, not just the poor or elderly. All of us are worthy of food, shelter and health care. And this $30K will cover that, if you’re frugal.

Look up the word, welfare, in the thesaurus and see the many synonyms: well-being, abundance, euphoria, contentment, thriving. Who doesn’t deserve this?

Universal Basic Income Allows Freedom

So now, at 18, you get $30K a year, for the rest of your life. The government has no say in how you spend it, or what you do with it. However, $30K will not get you a Tesla, or an apartment in Silicon Valley, or NYC. Here’s where the freedom lies; Capitalism still exists. You want to live a more opulent life, then use the money to go to college and become a software engineer, or doctor, or financial wizard. There’s no stopping you. Earn as much as you want, continue with business as usual. This isn’t socialism, this isn’t a mandatory maximum wage, rather it’s a guarantee. The sky’s the limit. Go be Elon Musk if you want. Or drop out of college and invent the next big thing. More power to you. With everyone now fed and sheltered, the market place demand for your product has grown.

UBI would also open the door to tax reform and simplification. The first $30K earned each year is NOT taxed, regardless of your total income or net worth. Anything you make above that, whether in wages or investments, is taxed at a simple rate across the board. Consumption taxes on luxury goods can also be considered.

Most importantly for futurists: UBI will allow technological advancement. When a farmer is guaranteed a basic income to pay her bills, she might be more willing to try a new sort of crop and take the economic hit a few years. Or when fast-food workers are replaced by robots, they can still thrive while figuring out their next step. Experts suggest that within 20 years, robots will replace 40% of our jobs. (Yes, each of the highlighted words in that sentence link to an article about the robot revolution that’s coming.) This is great for efficiency and technology, but not for humans if we don’t have any way of making an income. This means that many industries will AVOID technical advancement, rather than embrace it, because of the fear of losing their jobs and their livelihood. Take that risk away and watch the world change from one where many go hungry to one of abundance and health.

What Would You Do?

Many people fear that giving money away to others will support those “bad” people, like stoners, unwed mothers, and immigrants (Their words, not mine.) I hear this argument all the time. To me, UBI is about supporting humanity, plain and simple. We’ve been on this abundant planet long enough, the time has come to make it a good, safe and clean home for everyone. A guaranteed minimum income frees us from the fear of failure, and gives all of us a chance to start again, over and over, throughout our lives. Our tit-for-tat way of dealing with one another is only getting in our way and slowing us down.

Rather than fear what others would do with the money, let me ask you this, what would YOU do with a guaranteed minimum income of $30K a year?  Would you:

-          Raise a child?

-          Care for an elderly relative?

-          Start a new business?

-          Go to college?

-          Get your PhD?

-          Volunteer?

-          Paint beautiful scenes on hospital walls?

-          Write that screenplay?

-          Direct that documentary?

-          Leave your abusive spouse?

-          Tutor children in math?

-          Retire and raise goats?

-          Live simply in a tiny home?

-          Form a band?

-          Invent new technologies?

-          Work in the Open Source Movement?

-          Run for political office?

There are approximately 244,673,000 adults in the US, which means that this question really over two million answers, for each of us has our own desires, needs and wants.

While the Democrats and Republicans are sure to leave UBI out of their discussions, there are many third-party initiatives that include it as important. The Green Party is one. In his recent article, Transhumanist Party founder and first presidential candidate, Zoltan Istvan, mentions many futurist parties that include some form of UBI in their platform. They have to, for their futuristic goals are held hostage until we can change our economic policies from scarcity to abundance thinking. This is the thinking that made Silicon Valley. UBI completes the promise. Futurists looking to learn more about UBI should read Marshall Brain’s write up in IEET.

Lastly, dear Libertarians, you too can find UBI as part of the freedom you desire. Matt Zwolinski’s article on Cato Unbound is an excellent source for actual numbers and the effectiveness of a guaranteed basic income. Check it out and start thinking about what you would do with $30K a year.

The Art of Zen and Artificial Intelligence

This past week I attended a curious MeetUp titled, “Enlightened AI.” Given the topics I write about and follow, it seemed like the perfect thing for me to attend. I’ve been seeking the intersection of consciousness and technology for most of my life, so when I discovered the Consciousness Hacking MeetUp in Silicon Valley, I signed up immediately.

The talk was led by Google researcher, Mohamad Tarifi, PhD. Not only is he a bright engineer working on the next level of artificial intelligence at one of the top companies in the Valley, he’s also very well versed in the philosophies of consciousness. From the Abrahamic traditions, to the Buddhists and Eastern teachings, Tarifi displayed a grasp of the whole of humanity unlike any other technologist I’ve met. His speech focused on the fact that while many, like Sam Harris in his recent post on the AI apocalypse, warn us of the dire consequences of AI, there instead exists the possibility that artificial intelligence would most likely be more like a Buddha or saint, than a tyrannical operating system hell bent on destroying humans.

Tarifi's theory hinged on two points. First, that AI would not live in a human body, thus it wouldn’t have a physical amygdala—the fear center for human beings. Without fear, AI doesn’t need to defeat us, rather it would be naturally driven to do only one thing: more accurately discover the truth. Second, fear is the illusion of separation, which is the cause of all human suffering. AI therefore lacking fear, would always be at one with everything it connected to, thus wanting to serve and provide rather than destroy.

 Tarifi even went so far as to suggest that a fear of AI is merely a fear of one’s own egoic tendencies.

To some, this may seem naïve and that the only way to keep AI from killing us is to program it to be good. But if we follow the logic above, that isn’t necessary. True learning AI will learn from its own experiences, which will be vastly different than ours. Even when connected to human beings and receiving data and input from them, the AI will have its own body, and thus its own sensory systems with which to learn from that data.

The prevailing thought in the modern human thinking is that intelligence is all about the human brain. Moreover, the only intelligence worthy of attention is ours, as if within our head resides the only thinking entity in the universe. We cling to this idea with an absolute pride. But what if this is completely false and moreover, what if this is why we’re still far away from creating truly learning AI? Could it be that our myopic love of our brains is leading us astray?

I think this brain-centric theory of intelligence has limited us greatly and led to the assumption that to create AI, we must replicate our brains and give birth to a new, superior species. This only works if the brain is really the only part of our bodies responsible for learning. Recent research has suggested otherwise. That rather than being the originator of thought and learning, the brain is more like a receiver, wired up by the experiences we have in the world around us. The infant brain is barely formed, but over the next two years through the five senses—taste, touch, sight, smell and sound—patterns, highways and paths will be created within the brain, setting the foundation of life for the human being. The brain didn’t contain this information, rather the experiences the infant/toddler had within his/her environment generated the brain cell network, so to speak. Thus, our sensory systems are key to our intelligence.

But that’s not all. It’s now believed that our heart and brain also have a connection, where the heart senses the emotional state of the human based on the hormone levels of the body and sends that information to the brain, shaping the way a person thinks in any given situation. The HeartMath Institute has spent decades researching this connection and their work is finally being acknowledged as a breakthrough. So in addition to the five senses, we also have the heart that affects our ability to learn.

Lastly, science is also starting to discover the gut-brain connection, postulating that the bacteria in the wall of our intestines has something to do with how the brain is wired during those critical first two years, as well as long into adulthood, pointing to a host of issues that come up when things are right in the gut, such as anxiety, depression, etc. This leads me to believe that our gut is also a part of human intelligence and the ability to learn and process the world around us.

So if our intelligence is the result of our sensory systems, from the five senses to the heart and gut, as well as our brains themselves, why would we assume that a machine would learn in the same way? AI won’t take on a human body, thus it won’t have the brain (nor the amygdala that goes with it), it won’t have the heart and the various hormones it monitors, nor will it have an intestinal wall and bacteria to affect it. AI is more likely to inhabit a dishwasher, or a car, or a phone or even a network of servers and fiber optic cables. It will live in the world and collect data using sensory systems unique to its body or material form. This is how it will learn. Since none of us knows exactly what it’s like to live inside of a server or an iPhone, who are we to say that it will most likely be a narcissistic bastard that hates us?

Could it be that we’re the ones who hate ourselves, and our fear of AI, or any other intelligence other than our own, is simply a symptom of self-loathing?

Personally, I agree with Tarifi—I believe that AI is more likely to be free of fear and separation than we are and it will be able to understand connection to others in a way only our saints and gurus have understood. Perhaps we need AI to help us see that we too have the ability to live without fear, if only we can find a way to break down the illusion of separation we so desperately cling to.

Perhaps AI will be the guru we’ve been waiting for?