Foresight Fellow Special | Amanda Ngo: Innovating With AI for Wellbeing

[00:00:00] BE: Welcome to another episode of the Existential Hope Podcast. This is a special episode with Amanda Ngo. Amanda is a Foresight Fellow, and we're very happy to have her on this episode. I'm your host, Beatriz Arkech, and I co host this episode along with Allison Dittmann, who asked me in this interview, Amanda Ngo, she's a really inspiring guest.

[00:00:18] BE: She's currently focused on creating AI tools that promote healing. She puts together courses and workshops around being and her work is really just not about technology, but about how it can support human overall well being and flourishing. So join us as we dive into Amanda's journey, her vision for the future and all the exciting possibilities that she promotes now at the intersection of flourishing and AI.

[00:00:40] BE: For a full transcript of today's episode and recommended resources, please Existentialhope. com. You can also sign up to Amanda's upcoming app release there. We've linked it. And also don't forget to sign up to our newsletter to stay updated with the latest episodes and community updates. Now let's welcome Amanda Ngo to the Existential Hope podcast.

[00:00:59] BE: I'm thrilled to introduce Amanda Ngo, who is a Foresight Fellow. That's why I'm especially happy to introduce her. You're an Existential Hope Fellow at Foresight, and I know you've, you have a background in machine learning, I think. but you're currently working a lot on AI for enhancing human wellbeing, which is something that I'm very curious to hear more about.

[00:01:19] BE: And I hope we get to dive into in this interview, but yeah, welcome to maybe just start with telling us what is it that you're working on and what got you started? 

[00:01:27] AN: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And I'm really excited to be here and for this. Yeah. I'm currently working on how to help people I'm still playing with what exactly the phrasing is.

[00:01:37] AN: I think there's like a kind of novel or it's a unfolding space at the moment, but feel better being healing the sort of the experience of being alive and making that feel really positive, which is something I've been interested in for many years and been like slowly moving more and more from the AI space into the emotional space.

[00:01:58] AN: Hey, I think people are suffering. How can people feel better space? So yeah, concretely, I'm building courses for healing and also an AI tool to guide people through some healing modalities that are particularly effective and rewiring our like conditioned memories. Yeah. That's what I'm working on currently.

[00:02:17] BE: That's really interesting. I think when people think of AI, oftentimes, maybe it's in do me often these days, that's really interesting to, to hear about how it can also help us as humans and help us feel better. And why do you think you, you've chosen this? it's great that you want to make people feel better, but like, why do you think that's attracted you so much?

[00:02:37] BE: Yeah. 

[00:02:37] AN: Yeah, I, this has been like the hill I've wanted to stand on for so many years. And I think I was really involved in the AI safety space and just kept having this feeling of, yeah, we're, it's so incredibly important to look at the risks and what might go wrong. But I was like, we're, it feels like we're like driving without a destination in mind.

[00:02:57] AN: We're just like avoiding the potholes. We're like, Oh, not there. And I think it's because it's, I spent six months earlier, I guess last year as part of my sabbatical being like, where are we trying to go? What is the vision for where AI could take us? And it's such a hard question. It is so difficult.

[00:03:12] AN: There's a philosophy is dedicated to this and like psychology is dedicated to this and there's like spirituality and there's all these different fields and it's. It's like the question is like, what does it mean to be human? And where are we trying to go with that? And what is, I think in particular, what does the future feel like was something that came back to me over and over.

[00:03:32] AN: I was like, Oh, we have all these visions of like solar punk. Here's what it looks like. There's sunshine and there's green. And there's like cool cars that, I don't know, fly around, whatever it is like in those like visions. But what does it feel like? Like, how do we relate to each other? What do we wake up feeling?

[00:03:47] AN: And I think I just, I got just really struck with the sense of the possibility space of what things could feel like feeling really unexplored. I think there's this thing that happens where we experience our own internal world and that's our roof. We're like, Oh yeah, this is what feeling alive feels like.

[00:04:04] AN: But then you can take, you can blow the roof off and experience really different ways of being. and people have been doing this with meditation and qualia research kind of stuff. What are the bounds of what we can feel? But yeah, I just got really interested in, okay, like how can we focus on what the future feels like and not just what the future looks like.

[00:04:23] AN: And then as part of that, I think just looking around and especially, I think my personal story has been like having a lot more emotional turbulence under the surface. then I guess I felt like I could have. I looked around and I was like, other people seem more okay than I am. Like, what's up with that?

[00:04:39] AN: And went through this long journey of many different therapy modalities and exploring a lot of what my inner landscape looks like to try and get to a place of, I think I feel like good about the way that I, what life feels like. And so part of that was looking around and being like, huh, seems like we're suffering way more than we could be.

[00:04:56] AN: And it's, Not just, I read this so soon, this went on a long arc, but it's not just the classic like depression, anxiety, like mental health issues. It's like everyone, like the bounds on how good we can be feeling are like way out there and we're here. and so what's up with that? How can we move over there?

[00:05:13] AN: Yeah. 

[00:05:14] BE: Yeah. It's a very big question. I guess I've been thinking of it recently in relation to, because there's like a lot of happening in neurotech right now, I find. And that seems like an exciting space in many ways for making us be able to maybe feel what someone else feels or something like that.

[00:05:29] BE: That just seems like an extremely useful tool if we want to. would be able to make that happen to maybe help build empathy and like these sort of things. And also a lot of the, I think there's a lot with neurotechnology that scares me, but a lot of the sort of exciting things, like I know that people are saying, it could help us feel just way, way better than we could even maybe imagine right now.

[00:05:48] BE: and yeah, so the possibility space that you describe it, I think is really vast. And I also like the framing of what does the future feel like? It's something I actually, I think it was you who said this when I was, I think I was talking about world building with you. And I really kept that in mind because it's really hard trying to convey this.

[00:06:07] BE: I think we try with like pictures and we talk about it. Like this, we're trying to get better at like storytelling, all of these things. But yeah, I'm very curious to hear like more about what you're doing on this. Now that you said you were like doing, I think you said you're doing an app for helping with AI, helping you heal.

[00:06:25] BE: And then also these courses. Could you maybe tell us a bit more about what is it that you're trying to do with these courses? 

[00:06:31] AN: Yeah. I also just want to first speak to when you're pointing to the, yeah, how do we capture the sense of what the future feels like? One image that keeps coming back for me, I was visiting Barcelona with a friend and we went up to the top of this hill looking out over the whole city.

[00:06:46] AN: And I just had this moment of what if this entire city were enlightened, what would it feel like if every single, I don't know how many millions of people sitting there, if every single person were so deeply in tune with. themselves and others in the sort of like conscious field. And imagine just walking into that city, like you would feel it, right?

[00:07:05] AN: Like you'd just be like, Oh my gosh, like it would just, and I think a lot about this with so many of the things that we struggle with come out of not that place. It's really hard to do harm to others from that place. And like all of these things. And I just keep coming back to that image of looking out at the city and being like, Oh, what if this whole city were enlightened?

[00:07:22] AN: What would that feel like? anyway, that's something that's done up for me. I have been like on sabbatical exploring what this work looks like for a while and I'm just starting to get into, okay, I think I have a pathway for this and it's still very much evolving. But there's a couple of things. One is what I found when I started out on this journey is it's It feels like the Wild West in emotional work right now, which is exciting.

[00:07:43] AN: there's so much happening, it's really hard to tell what is gonna work for you and also discover. I spoke to the possibility space thing earlier. I think one of the themes that comes up for me a lot is you discover one like therapy modality and then you're like, Oh, this is amazing. And then you discover another one and your roof blows off and you're like, Oh my gosh, I didn't know that was possible.

[00:08:03] AN: And then I kept having that experience of having my roof blow off and be like, Oh wow, like I'm getting deeper and deeper into what is possible for me to feel and unwinding like deeper and deeper conditioning. And so one of the courses that I'm in the middle of running right now is like a tour of a different systematizing the different modalities that you could work through with healing.

[00:08:23] AN: So it's things like ideal parent figure therapy, which is really incredible and potent, and I'm really excited about internal family systems and somatic work. And so just taking people through a tour of here's a bunch of different modalities that might resonate with you, try them out, see what resonates.

[00:08:39] AN: That's one thing. there's a bunch of, I'm in the kind of very fun, playful exploration phase. There's so many different offerings that, that I think could really work here. One that I'm exploring is like, how do we show up to work? in a way that is from a place of presence, which is to say, often when we're in conflict, it's coming out of some way that we've constricted and some fear that we have.

[00:09:02] AN: So if we show up to work from a place of fear, then everything goes haywire down the line. And showing up to work from a place of like deep presence is quite difficult. And so I've been playing with like, how can we shift, like how we do work from that place? What else? And then, yeah, there's this whole area of, so I worked in products in AI and AI safety for a while.

[00:09:24] AN: And I was really thinking about like, how can AI play into this, into people's healing journeys, their journeys of becoming more alive and unfolding. And it's a tricky question because a lot of this work is about, it's about the interpersonal connection. It's about the, you are relearning how to relate to people and there's an energy field in between people.

[00:09:47] AN: And so the most powerful healing work happens with people, but you can actually. Do a lot of it on your own as well. And so the, what I'm exploring with the AI tool is guiding people through some of the most effective modalities for doing what's full memory reconsolidation, which is going back to early memories where we didn't feel safe.

[00:10:10] AN: We didn't feel cared for whatever it is and updating them with new evidence. And yeah, I think there's like a huge space of what this could look like. Right now, it's just like guiding through voice, but you can get to points where the AI system can read your body language and tell, Oh, given where you are, like, let's go in this direction.

[00:10:28] AN: Let's try this modality instead. Yeah. That's like a little description of what I'm working on. 

[00:10:33] BE: Yeah. It sounds very interesting. If you think, Oh, this has gone really well, 20 years from now, what do you see? Yeah. What has. AI been able to do for us, or what kind of tools are we using? 

[00:10:46] AN: Wow. That's a really good question.

[00:10:48] AN: I think for me, it like, I went through this like journey where it was really about the AI for a while, and then it became really about just the outcome. It's like the AI is truly just a tool. And so when I think about like things having gone incredibly in 20 years, I think about how everyone feels. Like I'm like, We, I think one, one of the outcomes of going through this healing journey is that you feel like in flow state constantly, like just in perpetual flow state.

[00:11:13] AN: And so if you imagine that it's like everyone wakes up and they're just in that flow state all the time. Or like the level of ease you feel in just like showing up to the world and like all of the knots and things that feel like constricted and fear and difficult are just like, You're okay with it.

[00:11:28] AN: And like, when I think about that, it just feels like really, just really joyful. It's all out. We have so much more space to, to, yeah, expand into that. And then, yeah. What is the role of AI in that? I think there's a couple ways I. Think about this. One is the AI tools give us more agency. We're able to, whenever we have something come up emotionally, go to a tool and work through it ourselves and feel like we can, and what that does increase your sense of, okay, I can handle stuff because I have this resourcing.

[00:12:00] AN: And then the other is the more of this healing work we do on ourselves, the more we can connect with others. So they bring us like closer to each other. 

[00:12:08] BE: Yeah. Yeah. I'd be curious to hear because yeah, it's, it sounds great, but it also sounds like a challenge to get there. If you, I know it's a really hard question to answer, but if you think about what do you see as the biggest, both kind of societal challenges, it's hard even to just disagree now a little bit as, or it's always been hard to do, to agree.

[00:12:28] BE: I think as a society, maybe I shouldn't overstate that, but yeah, in general, that seems like a challenge to actually get people there. And also maybe just, there's so much talk of. AI safety, do you see any challenges on the AI angle of it as well? 

[00:12:41] AN: yeah, that is a big question. Similar things coming to mind.

[00:12:45] AN: There's this thing, I'm sure you guys are familiar because you've done a lot of work in the exoho space, but there's this thing that happens when people imagine utopia, where they like, converge. It's like everything becomes more uniform. and this is just like a natural tendency of humans to like create order.

[00:12:59] AN: And so we imagine utopium, we're like, ah, yes, everyone wears the same stuff and everything looks like coherent. And I think this is just not actually utopia. It doesn't feel like that. And actually. The pathway that looks incredibly full of life. And also we see this in city design, actually, like when people try and create order, too much order in city design, it like squashes life.

[00:13:21] AN: And when you actually just let whatever happened happen and let the chaos emerge, that's where things are really tasty. So the thing that sparked when you were talking about agreement, disagreement is actually think the good state is where there's a huge amount of disagreement, diversity, things look chaotic and it's not, there isn't like a kind of uniform place you want to get to.

[00:13:40] AN: And I guess I think a lot about the Amartya Sen capabilities approach to being, just being as about the agency to be able to fulfill the things that you're wanting, have more capabilities available to you and getting to a place where it's whatever your dream is, whatever it is that you're wanting to do.

[00:13:58] AN: you're unable to do that. Yeah. I'm not sure if that really answered your question, but that's 

[00:14:02] BE: what came up hearing you speak. Yeah. I think it was a good answer to a very difficult question. Maybe, one thing. I would be curious to hear is it seems like it's pretty new ground. Do you see anyone else doing interesting things in this sphere?

[00:14:15] AN: Yeah. Yeah. there's a handful of AI healing companies that I think are amazing. There's a company called thyself refract, both of them are like doing really amazing work. There's also, I am less, less involved in the space now, but when I was in more of the AI governance for wellbeing space, there are people doing really interesting work around eliciting people's values and trying to align AI systems to people's values.

[00:14:38] AN: Oh, I guess you, the collective intelligence project, you guys know, and then the meaning alignment Institute. So I think there's people on both sides doing, and they do feel different or like they feel structurally different. Like one is about. aligning AI systems to human values and what it means for humans to flourish.

[00:14:55] AN: And the other is deploying AI systems into helping people flourish. And I think they like feed into each other. Like the more we deploy systems to help people flourish, the better we can understand what actually that looks like. And one of the things I'm excited about is Getting to the point with the AI tool where we can do studies, like we have enough people using it that we can see, Oh, what is it that actually improves your wellbeing the most?

[00:15:19] AN: And that can feed into the aligning AI systems to something. So there are two, two pieces of it. 

[00:15:25] BE: Yeah. I think when you have your tools out, share the links with us so we can, yeah. Yeah, share them with our listeners and community. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And you were also on, when we had this like existential hope transformative AI institutions hackathon, you were on the team and you guys came up with the flourishing foundation.

[00:15:45] BE: Do you want to a few words on that maybe? 

[00:15:47] AN: Yeah. It was this vision that I had last year while I was in this AI governance phase was very much like, how do you, what would the foundation or the Institute that aligns AI to wellbeing look like? And so that was part of what the flourishing foundation pitch was.

[00:16:04] AN: And yeah, as part of that, we talked about the wellbeing certification, like how can we measure the effect of different language models on our wellbeing and incentivize the products to be better for our wellbeing? I think there's so much interesting stuff there in terms of all the incentive systems currently are around like, yeah, like people want consumers to pay.

[00:16:24] AN: And I haven't, I just think there's like really interesting stuff to test around. Could you, how could you make it so that the companies themselves are genuinely incentivized to make products that are not like causing people to get stuck in addiction loops and give all their attention away to scrolling feeds, but actually help improve?

[00:16:43] AN: people's state of being. I think this is just hard. They think about building gyms. Gyms are hard. There's a lot of behavioral science that goes into like, how to make people go to the gyms. it's really good for you, but you don't want to immediately. Yeah. There's a lot of interesting stuff there. And then, yeah, I'm like still involved with that project with Ming and the flourishing foundation a little bit, but has pivoted more towards the deploying models for well being.

[00:17:06] BE: Yeah, we had Ming, I interviewed her podcast recently, so it's not public yet, but should be. But yeah, she talks a lot more about it. yeah, it's very interesting to, to try to like actually realign how we incentivize with all the products that we use. There's so many. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. No, you go. part of 

[00:17:25] AN: this, pivot for me was.

[00:17:27] AN: Realizing that one of the most important levers in people, like, how do I say this? You can, if you're trying to make the choice between, okay, I'm going to do scroll on Twitter, or I'm going to go to the gym. there's a lot of institutional and environmental things you can do. You can make gyms close by and all this kind of stuff.

[00:17:45] AN: but fundamentally it's the person's choice. And if we're escaping something and we're trying to go down the addiction route, like we're really just trying to shut out and feel okay and like numb ourselves, then we're just going to choose the the escapist technology. It's like technology enables us, but we are like going down that pathway.

[00:18:02] AN: And so I think it was like coming into clarity in myself of I think one of the most important levers for shifting our behavior with technology. is helping individuals be okay. the more okay you are, the less you like, it's easier for you to choose the healthy, or like the like more wellbeing pathway.

[00:18:19] AN: And then you get this flywheel effect. Like the more okay you are, the more you go to the gym. It's a terrible example, but whatever. Like that kind of thing. And so I think that, that sort of contributed to the shift towards, okay, let's help individuals like be more okay. Yeah. 

[00:18:32] BE: Yeah. It's like the positive spiral thing.

[00:18:34] BE: Yeah. 

[00:18:35] AN: Yeah. Totally. 

[00:18:35] BE: And I should say also, I'm going to hand over to Alison now, but I've seen a few interesting things in this very recently. There's a book coming out later this year called the Darwinian Trap by Jan Jön. And we're going to have him on the podcast also. But that's, he goes through these similar to what he has been talking about, like win these sorts of things, like how we can beat the sort of these loose, like commoners type of issues that we have.

[00:19:02] BE: And he suggests also like asking this question of what do we actually intrinsically value and like, how can we measure it? And then using accounting because he runs a company that does this, but for like environment questions right now, but to do it for like more kind of everything. yeah, I think there's.

[00:19:19] BE: Yeah. There's a lot of, it feels like it's in the zeitgeist. It's coming. So that's exciting. But I'll hand over to Alison to continue. I know she has a lot of questions for you. 

[00:19:27] Speaker 4: Yeah. When you mentioned Amartya, Amartya set my mind poked up because I had him up and down when I was studying, especially the capabilities based approach.

[00:19:37] Speaker 4: And there were a few lectures, I was at the law school of economics. So he was, there were many fans in our department of his approach. And so I'm really curious because it struck a chord with me. So maybe you could share a little bit more about him if you're interested in it, but I think his approach to like wellbeing is this really capabilities based approach.

[00:19:55] Speaker 4: And so this kind of like notion of like empowerment, of individuals and really creating more opportunities to be empowered rather than just like a kind of like plain utilitarian welfare based approach. And I thought that was always like really new and much more fitting, I think, to how people live their lives.

[00:20:11] Speaker 4: And so I'm really curious if that is more how you're thinking about how you're thinking about personal growth. And I loved your notion of unfolding, like the ability of individuals to unfold. Yeah. If that's more what you're thinking about, like, how could we instill that more into people? How does it look different than perhaps AI is just like helping you maximize your own individual welfare utility.

[00:20:31] Speaker 4: If there, if the AI systems are more there to empower us individually, if that is the way how you think about it and how would one go about that or what's different to the more normal approach? Yeah. That's very juicy. 

[00:20:43] AN: I will say I'm not, I'm totally not an expert on what she said. So here's anyone who's studied him.

[00:20:47] AN: I've just read some papers and Did the sort of trying to go through many different theories of wellbeing and understanding which of these actually makes sense and which can we apply to AI and the sort of capabilities approach to that. Yeah. So I think what sparked when you were speaking is I think agency is a thread that runs through everything from how we think about defining wellbeing and the capabilities approach.

[00:21:08] AN: through to, and there's, I think there's an interesting spectrum from well being from an intellectual frame and then being from an embodied frame. You can just go along this like scale and the more embodied you get, the more you're talking about like therapy and meditation and all that kind of stuff.

[00:21:22] AN: But as we go along the more embodied frame, it's also the central thread is agency. And a lot of the. work that's really resonating with people focuses on. There's one really beautiful sort of technique or practice, which is like listening to someone with unconditional acceptance and without the intention to fix them.

[00:21:41] AN: It's actually, we often go through the world being like, Oh, you have a problem. How can I fix it for you? Or you need help. And I know how to help you. And so I'm going to listen to you and then give you advice and tell you how I think you should fix it. And that fundamentally robs them of the agency to be able to be like, Actually, you know how to solve this already.

[00:21:56] AN: you already have the wisdom for this. And you can unfold into this, and I'm just here to witness you. yeah, I think, agency, I just keep coming back to is, the feeling of, oh, I actually have everything I need within me. I have all the resources I need. And everything is just about witnessing and helping me access those resources.

[00:22:13] AN: And this is like true in like spirituality as well, in terms of what we actually have, like infinite love and infinite consciousness, like inside us already. So I think it's a really beautiful piece. And then, yeah, there's this fascinating question of what does it look like for AI systems to enable agency and not take it away?

[00:22:29] AN: And when I was doing the like AI governance work. I really got pretty deep into, like, how would you, measure this? And one example is Socratic questioning, right? you, ChadGBT, when it first came out, really would just give you advice. it would be the annoying person who would just be like, oh, you have a problem?

[00:22:45] AN: Here's six things you can do. I'm just going to not going to assume you have like agency in this. and one of the, best practices in education is not to do that. It's not to be like, Oh, you have a question. I'm going to give you the answer. It's, Oh, you have a question. Let me ask you more questions.

[00:22:58] AN: And so I thought a lot about, could you measure how much it's doing Socratic questioning? And the problem is that's not always a thing that you want. Sometimes you actually do want advice and part of your agency is like, Nope, really give me advice. But yeah, I think there's this really fine line between.

[00:23:12] AN: And partly I think you can tell internally, like when you're using an AI tool and you have the internal sense of there's something I'm avoiding here. There's something I'm escaping. There's something that I'm trying to avoid facing in myself versus like when you're using a tool and you're like, Oh no, this is like enabling me to do more of what I do actually care about.

[00:23:31] AN: And I think it's just it's so hard to figure out from a measurement policy standpoint. And a lot easier from, still hard, but easier from an individual standpoint in terms of everyone being in a really good position to make those choices. That's also partly, I keep coming back to this like transition from like the thinking primarily about the AI governance side to thinking primarily about the individual side.

[00:23:53] AN: It's just kept coming back to man, like people. Like you can do as much as you want to regulate like AI girlfriends, but if people want an AI girlfriend, they're going to get an AI girlfriend when you like really have to like work with the person themselves. Yeah. 

[00:24:05] Speaker 4: Yeah. I feel like I see a lot of different use cases bubbling up on Twitter.

[00:24:09] Speaker 4: Like where people are more using AI systems or Socratic dialogue, or it's more like other than. Them asking like chatgpt questions, okay, chatgpt ask me questions about this. what am I avoiding? And I think that like people are trying to figure it out for themselves a bit now. And it will be interesting to have a bit more of a, almost different prompts to use there to have chatgpt question yourself.

[00:24:30] Speaker 4: Reversal would be really fun to see. Yeah. I also wanted to come back to a few of the other modalities or tools that you mentioned earlier. I think. Yeah. Internal family systems. And then you mentioned like some more somatic like therapy modes and wouldn't it be nice if we're all more in flow state or what would the city look like if it was enlightened?

[00:24:48] Speaker 4: I'm not sure if everyone will know really what these different modalities are. So if you want to say a few words, like I'm not going to ask you to walk us through the entire course that you guys are doing now. Even though I would absolutely love to sub to it. but if there are specific bits that you just want to highlight to people, but at least that people could check out that you think were just quite helpful or, yeah, just like giving a bit of a point to the different roles that you mentioned earlier would be really useful.

[00:25:13] AN: Yeah, totally. And then just what sparked before I go into that one is part of the tool I'm building has this inquiry practice where it asks you questions to help you go deeper into use the credit dialogue for emotions. So that's there. Yeah. Yeah, one thing I was noticing as I was speaking Beatrice earlier was like, there's this context layer of what is happening in our emotional system that I probably would help to lay out.

[00:25:35] AN: I guess the first part of my answer to that is the way emotional trauma, but little t trauma, everything that comes up is like difficult works is like, When we're really young, zero to onwards, we need care. Like we, we like desperately need our parents to care for us. If they don't care for us, we're going to die.

[00:25:54] AN: We literally die. And so we develop strategies to get the care that we need. And if our parents are not able to give us the full carry that we need, then like we, we fall into those strategies and they start to become our like habitual pattern. So one example with like attachment theory is if your parents aren't really available for you and you're just, you're crying and they're just not coming.

[00:26:15] AN: You just learn to stop crying. You're like what your tiny baby body is learning is, Oh, and I cry in a. It happens. And so you just save the resources and you go into shutdown. And then these become your patterns as you go forward. You move through life just being like, Oh, I just don't really expect to get my needs met.

[00:26:28] AN: And it can be so subconscious that you just don't even realize this is your reality. Not everyone else's reality. Like you think that's just how everyone is. And actually it's, that's your reality from what you learned growing up when you were really young. And so what these, a lot of these therapy modalities is doing is what's called memory reconsolidation.

[00:26:44] AN: It's like the kind of neuroscientific mechanism of this, which is actually, miraculously and incredibly, we can go back to those really early memories, which some of which are not even cognitive, like they're like just emotional. Like we had no words when we were zero or one. We can go back and we can overwrite those memories.

[00:27:03] AN: We can create new memories of having been given the care that we needed. So being fed, being nourished, being held, being treated with love, we can create those new memories and then we can like overwrite these strategies. So then you learn, Oh, actually I can get met, my, someone will come care for me.

[00:27:18] AN: And then I don't have to do this pattern where I just shut down and don't try and build relationships, for example. What these really effective modalities are doing is tapping into that mechanism. So they, so I spoke to internal family systems, super popular, it's really taking off and it's quite incredible.

[00:27:35] AN: And what it does is you find, you go into the emotion you're feeling, find the part of yourself. That there's a system or a concept that we have many different parts inside of us. And each of these parts is trying to get some need met. So there might've been some part when we were one year old that was like, I'm going to shut down because that's how I get, that's how I protect myself.

[00:27:54] AN: And it just keeps doing that. And we can actually find that part. And like, when you actually feel into this, you can feel that it's one years old. And we can take care of it and speak to it from ourself and, Oh, what are you needing? and, give it a hug and all that kind of stuff. And then you can, it can release that burden and can release that protective mechanism that it has.

[00:28:12] AN: So it's a really potent way to get to the really like deep moments that we formed these memories and strategies. Another one is this ideal parent figure, which I also really love. And it's, again, you go back into memories. You like find an emotion. You're like, okay, like I'm feeling, I don't know, like anxious, whatever it is.

[00:28:29] AN: And then you're like, go back into a memory in your childhood when you felt anxious. And then you imagine ideal parents coming in and giving you exactly what you needed. In that memory, maybe your parents left you alone, but you imagine ideal parents coming in and just holding you. And it can just be such a beautiful feeling in your body of, oh, I get the care that I need.

[00:28:48] AN: An ideal parent figure, especially, there's at least one study and the work that they've done has found that you can go from insecure attachment style, any kind of anxious difficulty with relationships, like all that kind of stuff, to secure attachment in a predictable number of sessions. I think it's about 52 or something.

[00:29:06] AN: If you just do 52 sessions of this, you can, not exactly, but on average, get to the point where you are, you have a secure attachment style. It's like pretty incredible. Yeah. We don't want more people to experience 

[00:29:16] Speaker 4: this. That is pretty incredible. I guess I have two follow up questions to this. One is that, what is the kind of like shift if it's done with humans versus AI systems in this modality or possible shift?

[00:29:28] Speaker 4: I could imagine that it may be easier for you to change your mind if you are interacting with an AI system if it was trained correctly, just because you don't have the possible shame or the possible other things that are coming up in a context with another human. But it's almost like in the privacy of your own mind, you have space to explore this if the privacy constraints are actually given, hopefully in that AI environment.

[00:29:49] Speaker 4: So I could, to some extent, I could imagine it being easier. And then on the other hand, I think I, When I read a bunch about attachment, there was also a lot of resources that help the partner of someone with a different attachment style, make them feel more secure. And so there was a lot of kind of like resources for someone that is like in a relationship with someone with have the.

[00:30:09] Speaker 4: anxious attachment style or something to help them make, to help them be more secure. And I wonder, is there a space for also some kind of like human AI modality where, the AI system also makes, gives some more resources to others in the space after dealing with a human to help them feel better.

[00:30:26] Speaker 4: So basically like just that multimodality of like human versus AI. For these types of therapy modalities, what was the speculation? We don't really have a lot of data on this yet, but if you were, have to speculate, like, where would this be going? 

[00:30:37] AN: Yeah. Oh, that's really exciting. One of the things that I still feel like it's on the list of a backlog of many things I'm excited about building into the app or building at some point is yeah.

[00:30:45] AN: Like I mentioned before, I think it's really about connecting people with people. There's a, in IFS there's this concept of self, which is like your fundamental, the part of you that is always there, that is always loving, that is always present. And it doesn't have any of the constrictions and fears and anxieties and attachments of your younger parts.

[00:31:02] AN: And one of the most healing things is interacting with someone who is in a place of self themselves. Because your nervous system pattern matches. There's like this concept of transmission. You're receiving a transmission from them of what that way of being feels like. And you're learning by, you can bring up anything.

[00:31:21] AN: It's like in a good therapist, like actually a lot of it can be meta. It's like you bring up anger and then you like, you watch as they actually just receive that and are totally okay with it. They're like, yeah, you have anger and don't react to it because they're in a place of self and not like a reactive parts place.

[00:31:38] AN: So there's this huge power, especially the more dysregulated your system is. the more powerful it is to be with someone who is in that place and to be learning secure attachment with that person. So that is like this, the super powerful thing that can't happen in with human to AI interaction. Cause you're not learning.

[00:31:59] AN: There's no other system to pattern match off of. And so all you have is your own system. And yeah, if you are, if the more dysregulated your system is, sometimes it can, you just don't want to be doing it on your own. You need to find someone to model that. But I think there's this really exciting thing of peer to peer with AI involved.

[00:32:16] AN: One of the things I've been playing with is I think that we don't, we aren't really equipped or taught how to help our friends. And no one really tells you that, but we actually totally have the resources and ability and wisdom to be really good at helping our friends go through emotional processes.

[00:32:32] AN: And as the more I've gone on this journey, the more I feel so lucky to have these friendships where we're really deeply holding each other in pretty intense emotions. Cause we just have a few pointers of like how to do that. And I've been thinking about like, how would you set up a peer to peer network or supporting people in supporting their friends and could AI be involved in that in terms of facilitating the group or giving pointers in terms of like how to hold space for other people.

[00:32:58] AN: yeah, I think there's something exciting there. 

[00:32:59] Speaker 4: One thing that came to mind is that sometimes when I'm in couples therapy with my partner, I sometimes think much of what the therapist, they're amazing, but a lot of what they're doing is basically trying to help us translate our emotional state into nonviolent communication.

[00:33:16] Speaker 4: with each other. And I feel like that could possibly be helped with AI systems if they're just like, okay, you just said this. Now see if using a framing like this would work better and try again. It feels so mechanistic. And at first I was like, why would this help? But then we're just like, oh, we're at a very different, end point of this conversation where we usually end up and something must have changed along the way.

[00:33:40] Speaker 4: And it is often this kind of cookie cutter and we see style. It doesn't work for everything. Sometimes it does feel a bit artificial, but like helping, I think AI systems, like helping you translate it into styles when people are already like, Trying to, they are wanting to write like an aggravated email and they put it into chat, can you, and we see this for me, and so I think maybe this translation bit could be done well, and then to the other bit that you mentioned, and like better helping or allowing friends to better support each other.

[00:34:09] Speaker 4: Like we recently went through this process where we wrote like user manuals for ourselves, for the group house that I live in. So that in case of emergency, people like how to handle your best or what your preferred way. And like preferred ways of holding space for you and so forth. And that was exciting just mostly because as a German, we're not like super conditioned to think about that very much.

[00:34:27] Speaker 4: And I was thinking about it. I was like, Oh, this is uncomfortable. Why is this uncomfortable? It was really interesting. I wonder if you have any thoughts on this. I'm totally fine if you don't, as a follow up question too, but just want to give you time to respond. 

[00:34:38] AN: Yeah, no, that's incredible. That sounds, I love that.

[00:34:41] AN: Yeah. Having user manuals for how to support me. I think the like. Hot take coming up, hearing like the first piece around nonviolent communication. I think it's amazing. It can be a really helpful tool. It's something like, it's remarkable how we can say the exact same words with a different energetic intention and the person on the other side will feel two totally different things.

[00:35:01] AN: I can say, I'm hearing you say this. Or I can say, I'm hearing this like this, and they feel really different, and the second one doesn't feel good to receive, and the first one does. And I think that it's almost like the actual thing is deeper, the actual thing is helping you own your emotions, get to the point where you're like, Oh, I feel angry and that's mine.

[00:35:19] AN: And really that's mine. That's my reaction. And there can be a boundary here that can be like, Oh, there's something that you did that I'm not okay with, but not making the other person wrong, or like you did something wrong. NVC can sometimes be like this band aid on top of the underlying energetic intention, which is you did something wrong, but I'm going to say I'm hearing whatever it is.

[00:35:38] AN: yeah, I think the thing that I'm excited about is like how to help people go through the journey themselves is getting to the point where they like. can own their emotions and know that it's like, Oh, this is my stuff. Yeah. 

[00:35:49] Speaker 4: Love it. If you were like trying to wrap up all of the different, I guess like individual and modalities and the AI enabled possible future modalities up into this kind of one vision for almost what a vision of existential hope for the future.

[00:36:03] Speaker 4: Is there like a specific picture that you paint? I know that we're painting the Looking over Barcelona and what if everyone won? I was like, I've been on that specific hill that you mentioned. It's a really interesting thought, wouldn't it? Like a specific like rapper for this kind of like vision of existential hope and like how it could feel like, I know it's difficult to put into words, but that would be like, I think an interesting piece that would.

[00:36:23] Speaker 4: would at least try to allow us to create an art piece on that. Let's see if we capture it well, but it's a hard one to do, especially because it's so feeling and somatic related. 

[00:36:31] AN: Yeah. Oh yeah. What a 

[00:36:32] Speaker 4: question. 

[00:36:33] AN: I have so many, I don't know if this is going to answer your question, but I have so many different like visuals.

[00:36:37] AN: I think I'm like a very visual thinker or something. When I think about the stuff, I'm like imagining these things. I like, I imagine like looking out at the city of Barcelona from being enlightened. I imagine there's a lot of like abundance and I guess it's similar to what I said before. It's for me, it's less about the process and more about, obviously the process is important, but it's more about the outcome.

[00:36:55] AN: And maybe I'll speak to both. The outcome that I see is, yeah, a lot of abundance, a lot of joy and playfulness. And in the extreme, I don't want to sound crazy, but in the extreme cases, it's like, what does it mean when we're all enlightened? We're really in touch with the fact that we're all part of the same consciousness field.

[00:37:11] AN: And we're like, we actually feel that. And so you're in this one big consciousness field and That to me is just, that's like the secret. Wow. I could contribute to that. It's like. everything. And then in terms of the process side, I think there's, and actually you mentioned something that really sparked, I didn't speak to before, but there's this thing of every individual has a different pathway to get to that point.

[00:37:34] AN: Like everyone is at a different stage in their journey. And like the one, there's going to one phrase. might be the difference or unblock you from where you are. And can we create these AI systems that have all of the wisdom of all of the healers and guides and practitioners and therapists in the world and can read your body and know what's happening in your somatic body?

[00:37:58] AN: And then we can decompose all the modalities. Like modalities are just like, nice little wrappers on a bunch of like emotional moves. but can we really just get to the point of here's the emotional move you're needing right now? Or that's going to help you here and have a sort of deeply attuned AI system.

[00:38:16] AN: Yeah. Then that is a really exciting vision for you. It's like doing research to create new modalities in the sense that you're like breaking all the modalities down and then Just using the moves and then combining each person has their own modality. That is what like resonates most for them.

[00:38:31] AN: So you get this sort of like very hyper personalized. 

[00:38:34] Speaker 4: Yeah. I went to meditation retreat the other day, which was with Dustin DiPerna and one thing 

[00:38:38] Speaker 3: that 

[00:38:41] Speaker 4: there's a lot of talking and shorter meditation session, and then you debrief as an entire room. And I think it's so interesting because you like, people have all kinds of different things come up for people and they share vulnerability into the space.

[00:38:53] Speaker 4: And he immediately tunes into the specific move that you called it, that would work for that specific person. And I was like, Oh, that's. I have this teacher and he has like very public long discussions about it because it often also helps someone else clarify what's going on internally for them. And it's so useful to see just like how we can flip into these super different paths to get to this one outcome, or that obviously feels different for people.

[00:39:18] Speaker 4: And anyway, it was really inspiring to see the kind of different moves that you tried on people and how they click for different people. And I was like, how is this going to click with anyone? And then someone was like, yep, I got it. I was like, okay, just to know that you can get there. It was really cool to see.

[00:39:34] Speaker 4: And I love that you mentioned that. What would it be like to feel into this collective consciousness? Also pair with your earlier comment on that It's perhaps like Utopia is not this like one same uniformity, but like it can still feel diverse for folks. and it has diverse ways of getting there.

[00:39:48] Speaker 4: And I really love that kind of dichotomy. okay. Wonderful. Yeah. I want to give you space to react to this. And then also as a wrapping up, if there's any specific work that you are currently doing in that space that people should. Be aware, we'd absolutely love to have you share a little bit more on that and how people can get in touch with that if they want to, then any final like closing bids that you want to leave folks with would be also really wonderful to work on.

[00:40:12] AN: Yeah. It's so cool that you did a Dustin DiVerna retreat. I haven't heard, I haven't done any yet, but I've heard really amazing things and yeah, it sounds really precious. And yeah, it's really resonating with, I think this is especially known in meditation. There's just so many, this is why there's so many teachers.

[00:40:27] AN: There's so many different pointers. And yeah, it's I've heard pointers where I'm like, I have no idea what you mean. And then another point is where I'm like, oh my goodness, that is exactly what I needed. it's really cool. It's this beautiful thing of everyone's journey, like what people are needing is really different.

[00:40:42] AN: And I think the same applies in the healing. Not that they're different, they're on a spectrum, the healing and the meditation, but like in the healing space of yeah, there's going to be like some move that's like really important for you that might totally not resonate with other people. So I think that's really exciting.

[00:40:56] AN: Yeah. The, if people are interested in, Taking the course, they can, I guess I'll, maybe I'll send you a link. It's not all in one place right now, but I can send you a link. If any of the course, other courses sparked in terms of an ideal parent figure course, the like emotions and presence at work course, or like workshop, they can reach out about that.

[00:41:16] AN: Cause I'm going to space. If people are like, Oh, this thing, then I'm like, let's create that. Let's create an offering around like what resonates with people. And the app is live. It's called sunrise. And I will send you a link, but you can find it at my sunrise. app. no one else can see this in the zoom chat, but there you go.

[00:41:34] AN: Yeah. And then you can sign up for the wait list. And then I just have little onboarding calls with people and they get them set up. 

[00:41:38] Speaker 4: Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. Signing up. Is there anything else that you wish we had asked that we didn't get to, any final bit? 

[00:41:46] AN: No, I think this was, Really lovely. It was so much fun to, I think there's a piece that it's fascinating bridging worlds here because this, there's like a world that I was really part of, which is like the AI governance, like AI safety world.

[00:41:58] AN: And there's like a way to speak about healing or being in that world that feels like, really familiar to, to me of a year ago. And then I bridged into this like totally other world, which is like the meditation world and the therapy world and the like deep healing practitioner world. And speaking to people in that world is like a very different context.

[00:42:19] AN: And so I feel like I'm in this challenging space where I'm trying to speak to both of these and make them make sense. And so it's a really cool opportunity to try speaking to both of those and sugar out like, There's like common knowledge in each of these that is really not known in the other one around like AI safety, common knowledge and like healing common knowledge.

[00:42:36] AN: And yeah, it's just really interesting to create a bridge there. 

[00:42:38] Speaker 4: Yeah. Much needed. I think right now that healing world into many other. and I think you're doing a really great job at translating it actually, because some of that stuff often feels a little too, or too like mushy or something, especially for people maybe in the AI world.

[00:42:51] Speaker 4: And I think you have a really good, clear way of communicating the value of different modalities for different contexts and people. We appreciate that. Yeah. 

[00:43:00] AN: Yeah. 

[00:43:00] Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you so much for, Oh, sorry. You want to say it? I'm just going to, 

[00:43:03] AN: that totally sparked one of the thing that I'll add is, I'm doing like coaching sessions on like these different modalities.

[00:43:08] AN: And also one way I'm framing it as being like, Oh, where are you at? And what might resonate with you? And where could I direct you? That might feel really beneficial. And I'm really excited about supporting like AI researchers or like people in tech and like people doing the like safety work or like whatever it is.

[00:43:22] AN: yeah. the technical work and then helping them get more in touch with this healing side. That sparks people can reach out to me as well. 

[00:43:27] Speaker 4: Also much needed if I'm less wrong or the EA from these days, I think. Thank you a lot for this really fun chat. And yeah, we will share a lot of the signup links that you just mentioned here when we publish this.

[00:43:42] Speaker 4: And yeah, I just really want to thank you. And I hope to see you again very soon and have a wonderful time in Canada for the time being.

[00:43:47] BE: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Existential Hope podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for more episodes like this one. You can also stay connected with us by subscribing to our sub stack and visit existentialhope. com. If you want to learn more about our upcoming project events and explore additional resources on the existential opportunities and the risks of the world's most impactful technologies, I would recommend going to our Existential Hope library.

[00:44:13] BE: Thank you again for listening and we'll see you next time on the existential podcast.