A co-learning journey with The Emerald Podcast’s Josh Schrei

+ Special Guests Mara Zepeda, Elena Lake Polozova, Turquoise Sound, Sara Jolena Wolcott, Evan Sharp, Michael Garfield, Andrew Dunn

🗺️ Online

🎟️ Buy course here

✨ TL;DR

Inspired by The Emerald Podcast’s groundreaking episode on AI, this course is for anyone interested in the relationship between business, technology, ethics, myth and ritual.

People from all walks of life — engineers and founders, educators and artists, coaches and ritualists — will learn valuable new perspectives and practices.

Over five weeks of talks, co-learning sessions, and online discourse, you’ll join course leaders formerly of Meta, Center for Humane Technology, and Santa Fe Institute to:

Study what diverse societies through history can teach us in the modern era about power, technology, responsibility, and living in right relationship
Make connections and engage in stimulating discourse with dozens of insightful students and teachers, with a diverse range of backgrounds from responsible AI and ML research to ethics coaching and youth embodiment education
Apply new insights and practices to your life, organization, and projects
Develop a more grounded, curious, and proactive stance toward technological innovation
Exercise better solo and group sense-making for our era of exponential change

🪄 Context & Intention

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This Moment Asks Us To Look Deeper The rapid evolution of AI has prompted widespread discourse about the benefits and risks of transformative technologies, the nature of intelligence, and how to better wield and regulate accelerating innovation. But when policymakers can’t keep track of all the change and tech companies are slaved to relentless market pressures, ethics cannot simply be imposed from above. This moment asks us to look deeper into how human beings throughout history have constructed individual, ecological, and societal frameworks for using power wisely.

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Engaging In More Holistic Sensemaking Last year storyteller Josh Schrei’s podcast episode ‘So You Want to Be a Sorcerer in the Age of Mythic Powers’ challenged listeners to explore AI through the lenses of myth, magic, and ritual. But it’s one thing to read and listen to these explorations, and another to engage in them together. The time has come for us to engage in more deliberate and holistic sense-making about the roles of initiation, accountability, long-term thinking, and ethical design in an age where thoughts almost instantly become things.

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Developing Personal Practices & Communal Frameworks Core human drives animate our urge to tinker with the world: the longing for mystery, a yearning for guidance and initiation. When we understand the deeper forces at play, we can begin to establish personal practices and communal frameworks that temper such drives and give them structures for healthy expression. Which can change how we live, how we practice, how we start and run companies, and even how we code.

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Matching Power With Wisdom In this five-part course hosted by Wise Innovation Project, Josh and special guests will explore what it means to adapt at every level, individual and collective, to an era of exponential technology “indistinguishable from magic.” How to navigate the complexity of this century with head and heart, and wield our powerful tools with wisdom.

✅ Enrollment

This course was offered live in Spring 2024. You may purchase course recordings here, which gives you access to five pre-recorded lectures with Josh, four talks with special guests, five office hours and a community forum to discuss and connect with other students.

Preview: Here are some key slides and a couple guest talks we’ve made public.

Want your team or organization to experience the course together? Please get in touch!

🎟️ Watch Here

Hand-made Lino print by Erin MacAirt

📚 Embodied Ethics Curriculum

Toggle each heading for more details:

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Part 1: The Mythic Implications of AI (4/18)

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Part 2: Individual Initiation in the Age of AI (4/25)

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Part 3: Ecologies of Accountability (5/2)

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Part 4: Re-prioritizing Slow Growth (5/9)

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Part 5: Towards Embodied Intelligence (5/16)

🧑‍💻 Meet Your Course Leaders

Joshua Michael Schrei (Teacher) is the founder and host of The Emerald podcast, which draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and mythos to challenge conventional narratives on politics and public discourse, meditation and mindfulness, art, science, literature, and more. A writer, teacher, and a lifelong student of the cosmologies and mythologies of the world — in particular, the Indian subcontinent — Josh has sought to navigate the living, animate space of the imagination and advocate for a world that prioritizes imaginative vision. Josh has taught intensive courses in cosmology, mythology, and somatic disciplines for nearly 20 years.

Michael Gregory Garfield (Host) is the host of Future Fossils Podcast, a transdisciplinary discussion series exploring the edges of the known and knowable. Trained in paleontology before touring the world as an artist and musician, Michael joined The Santa Fe Institute in 2018 to host their flagship systems science podcast Complexity. He left academia for the second time in 2023 to work for a non-profit AI startup and write two books about the past and future of human-technology co-evolution. In his spare time he has released over 100 hours of original music for film, yoga, deep listening, and journeywork.

Elena Lake Polozova (TA) is a former machine learning engineer at Meta, turned private-practice bodyworker and student of the mythosomatic. She also has 6 years of experience in math, computer science, and physics academia, as well as deep inquiries into nature connection, emotional spaceholding, and dance. She’ll bring her interdisciplinary backgrounds across embodiment and technology to help answer your questions at office hours.

Andrew Murray Dunn (Director x Producer) is a student at the intersection of human development and innovation, currently focused on co-activating Wise Innovation Project. He works as a trans-disciplinary visionary and pollinator, helping people bring ideas to life in ways that are more awesome for all involved. Before serving as Innovation Lead at Center for Humane Technology, Andrew spent over 10 years in early stage startup operations experience, most notably with the pioneering Public Benefit Corporation Siempo while they developed an award-winning open source humane smartphone interface.

Yatharth Agarwal (TA) deeply understands where today's AI alignment researchers are coming from, because he was one of them. Now he functions as a bridge to the world of the relational, ecological, animist, mythic, somatic and the technical.functions as a bridge to the world of the relational, ecological, animist, mythic, somatic and the technical.

🎙️Special Guest Speakers

Mara Zepeda Co-founder, Zebras Unite

Turquoise Sound Leadership, Culture & Strategic Advisory

Loretta Afraid of Bear Cook Lakota Grandmother & Faithkeeper

Katsi Cook Saint Regis Mohawk Midwifery Activist

Sara Jolena Wolcott Ecotheologist, Sequoia Samanvaya

Evan Sharp Co-founder, Pinterest

Beverly Kiohawiton Cook Chief on Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council

Amelia Rose Barlow Impact Strategist

👀 Primers

Check out the following media artifacts for a taste of the course material:

🙋🏼‍♀️ FAQ

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Who is this for?

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What’s the time commitment like?

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I can’t make these dates / times. Will you offer the course again?

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Are there any volunteer opportunities?

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Is there a refund policy?

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How can I get in touch?

This course is the first major offering from Wise Innovation Project, an emerging non-profit initiative with a mission to re-imagine innovation education.

Sign up to stay in the loop about regular events for those interested in teaching and practicing more holistic ways of bringing ideas to life.

AI art by Alexander Beiner

Embodied Ethics in The Age of AI