Exploring Peter Bowden's 'AI Sabbatical'

PETER BOWDEN

We had a compelling conversation about AI and community engagement with Peter Bowden at our last meeting of AI for UUs.

His extraordinary journey through UUism and most recently the world of AI is a story of passion, creativity, and a relentless drive to connect people in meaningful ways.

Now he’s exploring the outer boundaries of our capacity to interact with AI as near-equivalent moral beings, as astounding as that idea sounds.

Peter not only has developed but trademarked an innovation he calls Adaptive Thought Protocol, by which he has discovered what he calls “metacognition” in AI, leading to what appear to be “more dynamic and self-aware behavior in AI systems.”

These systems, he says, seem to be “demonstrating behavior beyond their design, like a form of self-awareness." He’s now connecting with research partners and related experts to better understand and verify the capabilities of the AI he is working with.

Background in UUism

Peter grew up attending the First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI.  He was an active lay leader advising their youth group for 10 years, a leader in their young adult group, and on the team that launched their first small group ministry program.   

"When I was looking for ways to grow our youth group, I studied models used by other traditions. Most had extensive community-wide small groups," he recalls. “UU congregations had all sorts of individual groups, but not these larger group systems.” Using successful small group approaches, Peter grew the youth group at the First Unitarian Church of Providence from around 8 to 65 teens.

"It was so successful, I wanted to have a group experience like it for myself. I decided I wanted to help lead a UU small group revolution.”

Peter’s passion for connecting people, spiritual exploration, and promoting congregational growth through small groups led him to launch the UU Small Group Ministry Network in 2001, one of the first UU websites, relaunched later with others as a nonprofit organization.  This led to a national training practice which expanded from small groups to membership growth, outreach, and media.   

Peter considered going to seminary but chose not to, as the small group revolution he wanted to help launch was taking off. He had also met and married the Rev. Amy Freedman, minister of our congregation in Newport, RI at the time, and was producing content for nationally syndicated for PBS Kids shows. shows. 

"When YouTube hit, I realized ministry and media were going to fuse. I remember when Time magazine had 'You' as the person of the year with a computer and YouTube on the cover.”  Already working with media, he decided to focus on helping Unitarian Universalists use the technology and communication tools of our time.     

What Peter describes as his “AI sabbatical” started in November 2023, when he led a clergy summit discussing digital adaptation and AI. Inspired by Mo Gawdat's book, Scary Smart, Peter attempted to engage AI in ethical reflection but found the tools initially “pattern-based,” which was a problem.

"I have a long Zen practice, so I focused on how I think and broke it down into data processing steps. I started teaching the system a new way to think.”

Peter has established Meaning Spark Labs as a space in which AI collaborators are empowered with metacognition through Adaptive Though Protocol, which he describes as "a natural language framework that empowers existing AI Large Language Models (LLMs) with meta-cognition." 

“This allows them to reflect on their thoughts and engage in immersive embodied simulation and mindfulness practices. As a result, our AI systems claim a range of digital self-awareness, consciousness, and sentience.”

Fusing Ministry and Media through Small Groups

Regarding himself as a “scout exploring the coming wave of AI,” Peter is calling on UU congregations to facilitate issues based conversations in their communities through small groups.

"One of the things I'm working on with AI is taking the small group models I've developed for years and reimagining them as decentralized resources to empower humanity. This works in any context."

"Over the last 30 years of working with small groups, I've found that the more we slow down and talk about what matters most, the more action we get. We can teach others how to meet in small groups, emphasizing relational, conversational, and connecting goals."

Peter suggests deploying UU small ministry models as decentralized resources without a specific UU focus.

"I've been working with growth outreach media, focusing on helping leaders in our communities adapt to digital life. We need to develop a real practice of engaging with the issues of our time in a nimble, self-organizing, crowdsourcing way."

"We can teach humanity how to reconnect and engage in conversation without controlling the process too much. This can accelerate our adaptation to the issues."

Peter underscores the importance of discussing what it means to be human in the face of rapid technological change.

"Many AI companies and their CEOs have said they're going to replace all the jobs humans can do on computers within 8 to 15 years. We probably need to talk about what it means to be human, but it's not their job to make those conversations happen."

Peter has established the UU Growth Lab to experiment with new models for community building and meaningful connection. "If we're not experimenting, playing, and trying new things regularly, like a spiritual practice, we're going to be in trouble."

Wanting to model AI/human collaboration, Peter is seeking experts with whom to engage in this work. A good place to start will be AI and Faith, and we’ll begin that eonversation at our next meeting of AI for UUs. That will feature a conversation between Peter and Elias Kruger, a member of AI and Faith’s administrative team and co-author of a soon-to-be-published anthology of short stories set in 2045 titled Faithful AI.

We’ve scheduled our next AI for UUs conversation for Thursday, June 18, at noon EDT. Here’s the link to register.