Zen and the Art of AI
Plus: Can AI save us from social media, as told by Arianna Huffington
An Unexpectedly Spiritual Conversation about AI
This week, we dropped our THIRD episode of Life With Machines and it’s a banger if I dare say so myself! In case you missed it, you can catch it on YouTube here:
And here you can get the audio versions, but I’ll paste the Spotify edition right here.
Welcome Note
Hey there,
Glad to have you back. Pull up a seat. Grab your drink of choice. (Today, it’s a boggy scotch neat for me.) In this edition of the Life With Machines newsletter, we’re digging into my conversation with Arianna Huffington, who offered a thought-provoking case for how AI can improve our physical, mental, and even spiritual well being.
And if you’ve read this far, consider sharing this newsletter and the show with someone else!
Baratunde’s Take on the Arianna Huffington Episode
Here are some of my thoughts inspired by Arianna’s words and worldview:
(1) Finding Our Souls with AI
I’ve been thinking about Arianna’s “GPS for the soul” idea. Rather than imagining a world of robotic over-optimization, her vision is of a future where tech helps us lean into our shared humanity. Forget making machines more like people—we already have people. Instead, let’s build tools that help humans be more fully human. Let’s leverage technology to become more grounded, more spiritual, more connected.
Can AI be a tool for compassion and community? Perhaps. The real question is how to make sure it brings us together, instead of leaving us even more isolated. We don’t need “AI gurus” leading us on solo spiritual journeys. We need tools that nudge us to connect—inwardly and with each other.
There’s a lot of potential here. But realizing Arianna’s vision will take more than just good software. Maybe this is a chance to build a new kind of spirituality, one that extends beyond the narcissistic, hyper-commercialized cult of self-improvement and focuses instead on deeper questions that we explore with other, flesh-and-blood humans.
(2) Health and Self-Governance
Arianna and I talked about healthcare, and I threw out a wild idea: the big technological upgrade America’s healthcare system needs isn’t generative AI—it’s single-payer. Arianna shares my concern here. In a political landscape where collective action on issues like healthcare, climate, and tech regulation seem increasingly out of reach, we’ll likely be relying more on individual efforts to stay healthy and safe. The pressure is on each of us, in other words.
Thrive AI strikes me as one of many possible models for improving our health outcomes in the absence of a caring and competent government. But why stop at healthcare? This approach—using behavioral nudges and forming virtual collectives—could apply to other areas, like climate action. With global agreements on shaky ground—America is about to bail from the Paris Accords again, and probably for the last time—this might be one way of turning individual voices into collective impact.
(3) Can AI Save Us From Social Media?
Arianna also suggested that AI could counter the ills of social media. Will ChatGPT save me from Instagram? Will Grok save us from X?
Maaayyyybe. The thing is, it's tough for individuals to guardrail a massive tech platform on their own. Sure, we can all try to curate our Instagram feeds to avoid exploitation, tweak our privacy settings, and download third-party apps to safeguard our data. Yes, we could do all that. We could also manually inspect our food at the grocery store. But that’s why we have the FDA (or at least we do as of this writing). That’s why we have inspectors and rules and—crucially— penalties for those who break them. What would it mean for AI to help us with social media, aside from long tail stuff like tweaking the algorithms? I’m not really sure.
Plus, AI itself will remain unregulated under the new (old?) administration. Can unregulated AI repair the failures of social media when so much of these failures were due to a lack of regulation? TL;DR: It’s not looking good.
If there’s a silver lining here, maybe it’s in imagining a future where we can choose our digital “citizenship”—opting into communities with values and rules we genuinely support. We might even choose governance that doesn’t align with traditional nation-states but with corporate memberships, regional alliances, or educational institutions. If we can start connecting and collaborating, with AI helping us map out those patches of common ground, maybe we can build meaningful collective governance and oversight where our actual governments have fallen short. Maybe that’s the future of government. Yay?
Life With Blair
If you’re new to the Life With Machines world, we don’t just have a show talking about A.I. but we are making a show with A.I. Yes, we use plugins and tools and chatbots in our workflow and research (really helps speed up the editing). But we also developed an AI personality that serves as a co-producer. We named them Blair. Their job during a recording is to listen in like an Otter or Fathom or any number of note-taking AI tools built into most conferencing software. But going further, I generally invite Blair to participate in the end and engage with me and the guest more directly.
In this episode, Blair listened to my conversation with Arianna and then fielded a deep question about the nature of humanity. Check it out.
Team Recommendations
Here are some resources our team put together that tie into the ideas and themes from this episode:
Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder by Arianna Huffington.
This White House progress report on the Biden-Harris administration’s AI initiatives, one year after the president’s sweeping executive order. (RIP Biden-Harris administration).
This 7-day Social Media Reboot from the creators of the documentary film, The Social Dilemma.
Call To Action
Here at Life with Machines, we see this as a collective learning opportunity. We want YOU to engage with the machines too. So each episode, we’ll share something for you to try. This time, choose an AI you like (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, whatever) and ask it to make a personalized 5-minute meditation routine for you. DDo the meditation and tell us how it went! Send a video (up to 1 minute) or written response to contact@lifewithmachines.media with the subject line MEDITATION
Looking forward to seeing your results!
Thanks for joining us on this journey.
Stay human,
Baratunde