Engaging Mindfully with AI: A Human Ecological Approach

As individuals and communities, we face rapidly escalating temptations and pressures to embrace the use of increasingly diverse, hybrid, powerful systems of artificial intelligence in every aspect of our lives. These systems seem to both promise to make virtually everything dramatically better in almost unimaginable ways while, at the same time, also threatening to completely disrupt, replace, or destroy almost everything that is familiar and cherished. What are collaborative ways in which we can learn to make wise use of these possibilities and cope with these challenges? What skills and resources can we acquire to understand, use, and control these systems in our personal lives and our communities? What methods and alliances can we develop to limit, reduce, or completely eliminate the interventions and impacts of AI in our personal lives, communities, and ecosystems?

This is a collaborative learning course in which we will study emerging best practices for dealing with these issues. Readings will include applied materials on working with AI, mindfulness, collaborative skills, and meta-cognition as well as theoretical and philosophical analyses of emerging AI technologies and the opportunities and threats they may pose in ongoing social changes. With visiting speakers, trainings, and seminar discussions we will, as a class, explore and critically examine emerging consensuses on best uses in mindful learning, writing, and collaboration.

Materials may include, for instance: 1.) films, blog posts, podcasts, articles, and books on philosophical frameworks and best practices for using AI and related technologies in social entrepreneurship (Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI), research and writing (Kate Meyer’s Eduprotocols), community building and activism (Sasha Constanza-Chock’s Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need), mindfulness practices in technological contexts for personal growth (Deepak Chopra’s Digital Dharma), collaborative work in technological contexts (Howard Rheingold’s Netsmart: How to Thrive Online); and 3.) philosophical, historical and social science investigations of the opportunities and threats AI technologies are presenting (Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0, and writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, David Loy, Elise Boulding).

Homework and labs will normally combine research, experiential, and reflective writing components that, from week to week, balance personal and interpersonal exercises done with and without AI tools. These will be designed to help students apply and critically analyze class readings and at the same time, through the course of the term, successively develop the key materials and textual components for their final group projects in an integrated way.

In a series of short homework assignments, students will research and analyze key elements for wise practices using—and not using—artificial intelligence to advance personal goals as well as shared visions of well-being for communities and societies. To help synthesize this learning, each student will also collaborate in a small group to draft a handbook/manifesto that proposes ways to integrate best personal and collaborative practices in some context of special interest such as a school, research institute, small business, activist organization, or spiritual community.

Evaluation will be based on the extent to which class participation and written work demonstrate progress on the goals of developing abilities: 1.) to learn how to learn about how human/AI systems work, 2.) To learn how to cope personally with them in ways students find meaningful, productive, and personally enhancing, and 3.) to learn how to articulate and advocate for methods of responding to them which offer communities resilient ways to navigate the disruptions AI technologies are introducing.