Augmenting UU Saratoga with AI

A Proposal to the New Home Task Force
By the Adult Education Team

January 13, 2024

INTRODUCTION

My determination to write a great novel was instilled in me by Mrs. Mayes, my sixth-grade teacher at Orrington Elementary School in Evanston, Illinois. She took me aside in the waning days of the 1965 school year and said, “You have a talent for writing. Develop it.” From that day forward, I’ve felt obligated to become something akin to the next Dostoevsky.

My determination to produce a prophetic, expert-based work of science fiction was instilled in me in 1968 by Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That determination was rekindled in 1984 by Ripley Scott’s Blade Runner. That’s when my prefrontal cortex teamed up with my medial temporal lobes, parietal lobes, temporal-parietal junction and default mode network to start running my “Michael Carmody Algorithm.” For whatever reason deep in my unconscious, these brain regions became fixated on imagining themselves serving in the role of the Tyrell Corporation’s chief PR guy, responsible for explaining to the American people how four of our Replicants slaughtered the entire crew of a supply ship and started making their way to Earth from the Outer World.

As time has marched on, so has this mental rubric. Michael Carmody, my 2032 Analog, is now Vice President for Human Flourishing, for Darwin’s Edge. Founder and CEO Surina Rao has handed me the assignment of launching ThinkPal, the most advanced neural auxiliary of its time. We must achieve this before the 2032 Presidential Election so we can persuade the American people the time has arrived to upgrade our operating systems with ThinkPal and deploy the National Brain/Computer Interface. Only Henry Van Buren has the technical smarts, political savvy, and grasp of the federal bureaucracy to get this done.

Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick as a “how-to” book about whaling, drawing on his experience as common sailor. Drawing on my experience in PR and marketing, I’m writing Darwin’s Edge as a how-to for launching a transformative neurotechnology. I’m using Zoom, Trint, Basecamp, ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Squarespace on an AI-powered platform called Smartacus, home of the UU Saratoga Adult Education Team in collaboration with UU Boca Raton, AI and Faith, and the Soul Matters Sharing Circle.

Our proposal to host an AI-focused workshop at General Assembly shows how our several sites and initiatives fit together.

GOALS OF OUR PROJECT

Forty years in development, Darwin’s Edge is now ready for its UU-centered rollout, launched with these goals:

  • Generate a national conversation in UU congregations about the possibilities and risks inherent in the development of the Brain/Computer Interface (BCI);

  • Shine a bright light on UU Saratoga as the UU congregation that’s doing most to bring to the fore key questions that must be asked as we integrate humans and AI via the BCI;

  • Employ collaborative and generative media in strengthening UU Saratoga’s communications internally and with UUs nationally;

  • Collaboratively develop in Darwin’s Edge and Smartacus intellectual property of substantial value, an appropriate portion of which is to be contributed to the fund to build our new meeting house.

ENGAGING EXPERTS AND AUDIENCES IN AN INTERACTIVE STORY

The key question we’re asking: “To augment or not augment?”

MY olympia sm3 typewriter

As a writer, I have continually augmented my skills over the years. I started on an Olympia SM3 manual typewriter and over the years have graduated step-by-step to an IBM Selectric, a KayPro II, an IBM PC, an Apple MacIntosh, a MacBook Pro, and, now, a Apple desktop that’s so smart it recognizes me by my fingerprint. Meanwhile, all the apps have advanced as well, from Volkswriter in the 1980s, through email, the World Wide Web, Basecamp, Zoom, Trint, and Squarespace.

And now ChatGPT and Dall-E. Amazing.

  • A machine that writes 20 times faster than I do in any format, style or voice I specify.

  • A machine that instantly generates a Pixar-quality image of anything, or anyone, I ask.

I am dramatically augmented by these technologies and further empowered by experts we’re able to convene in panels of any any size in Zoom and Basecamp. We use Trint to convert speech to text. For further augmentation, we may — or may not — run it through ChatGPT.

With our exacting human eye, we make our changes, publish the work, and call it “finished.” We have a first-of-its-kind conveyor belt of content closely managed by the authors who attach their names to these works. We share our AI-augmented with 250 UU congregations on:

As MIT’s Tom Malone could call Smartacus a supermind, “a group of individuals acting together in ways that seem intelligent.”

Like murmurating sparrows.

My proposal to UU Saratoga is to develop Darwin’s Edge into a compelling narrative and marketable screenplay and position UU Saratoga at the center of the Smartacus supermind, driving high-quality AI-themed content with our Adult Education Team in collaboration with ChatGPT and Dall-E 3.

At the very moment we’re planning to build a new meeting house, we have come to a transformational moment in the evolution of humankind. We are being augmented now by the arrival of generative AI. We will be even more augmented when thalamitic integration — or some other equally transformative neurotechnology — arrives in the early 2030s, as some experts (like Bob Johansen) are predicting.

In his fine Ayudha Puja sermon, Rev. Joe mused:

“I wonder if the scientists and engineers — as well as the rest of us — approached this technology with an openness to awe if we might better appreciate how A.I. might be used and abused. I wonder if we approached the technology with a practice of reverence if that might help us to pause if only for a moment to reflect on the ethics and morality we want ourselves and our creation to embody before the new technology becomes for us a second skin.”

Here’s how I propose to introduce Darwin’s Edge to 250 UU congregations nationally via Soul Matters and to potentially hundreds more at General Assembly.

With openness to awe and reverence, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.

In Fellowship,

Dan