By Lily Rockefeller
We continue our two-part series on the Artificial Intelligence and Our Spiritual Imagination conference, held online October 17-18. We invited our speakers to sit with the same two questions to showcase the variety of perspectives, inquiries, and ways of knowing that will shape our conversations at the conference this fall.
This week, we hear from Wakanyi Hoffman, Peter Cobabe, Vincent Hunt, and Amy Elizabeth Fox. Wakanyi is an author, scholar of Indigenous African knowledge, and global spokesperson for the Ubuntu philosophy in the age of AI. Peter is a technologist and founder of Adaptr AI, exploring how artificial intelligence can reshape business, creativity, and the future of human potential. Vincent Hunt is an innovation strategist, facilitator, and founder of the Bureau of Creative Intelligence, with a focus on the intersection of emerging technology and human creative capacity. Amy is a co-founder and CEO of Mobius Executive Leadership, a global transformational leadership firm, and has served for 20 years as a leadership and culture change advisor to leading companies.
What do you think AI is revealing about what it means to be human—and what, if anything, does it challenge us to reconsider about our spiritual lives?
Wakanyi Hoffman: AI is not revealing what it means to be human. It is merely mirroring what we believe it means to be human. The challenge that we face, therefore, is how to qualify what we mean when we say, “being human.” For me this is about asking a different question such as, what new skills must we develop to relate with each other, and with life on earth?
Peter Cobabe: AI is revealing that we are not human ‘doings.’ As we hand off cognitive work, creative work, and busy work to machines, what remains is the visionary, the orchestrator, the one holding intent. We move from human doing to human being; this is our spiritual evolution unfolding. We can now place our inner intention into a system that multiplies and expresses it. Little is more spiritual than bringing the invisible into form, and AI puts the clarity of our vision back at the center of the life we are directing and the work we “do.”
Vincent Hunt: Since the beginning of time, humans have tended to misplace value—unfortunately, this misplaced value tends to show up as what I call “monuments.” Let me give you an example: cognitive intelligence. A majority of our lives, entire academic careers, is hinged upon cognitive intelligence. This cognitive intelligence also becomes an indicator of our socioeconomic grounding. For instance, a person with a master’s degree or PhD has higher standing in a socioeconomic sense. And in part there’s nothing wrong with this. Until there is.
Artificial intelligence comes to challenge the monument of cognitive intelligence. What artificial intelligence does really, really well is take a large amount of data and analyze and process it and, in turn, give answers. This was the work of human beings before artificial intelligence. It was tested. It was graded. It was rewarded. And it became the standard by which we measured each other’s intelligence. What artificial intelligence is doing is forcing us into what I believe is the age of real human intelligence. Creative intelligence. Emotional intelligence. Judgment. Taste. Lived experiences. These are things that machines have not figured out how to replicate. And these are the very things that we need in order to move in the age of machines. So, what I believe is that artificial intelligence is ushering in the more genuine side of who we are as human beings.
And what it means to our spiritual selves—in the collapse of such monuments, I believe you’re going to have a whole generation of people trying to figure out who they are. If they are no longer classified by the tasks that they can do or the intelligence that they have accumulated, what becomes of their sense of identity? This in and of itself is a bigger question. The question is, “Who am I at my origin?” And to me this is a very spiritual question. So while I do not have the answers, I speculate that people, in their pursuit of understanding who they are on this earth, will undergo a spiritual journey like no other.
Amy Elizabeth Fox: This is a time where humanity can start to appreciate what is deeper and more abiding than models, frameworks, and knowledge. We can start to cultivate presence, coherence, trust, generosity, wisdom. These qualities and some of the transformational leadership capabilities they enable—collective intelligence, exponential imagination, intuition, a slower rhythm that leads to synergistic thinking and somatic intelligence, and resilience—are more urgently needed than ever. The quest of the spirit—for beauty, for meaning, for love—and the expressions of soul for healing and awakening—have never been more needed.
As AI becomes increasingly woven into everyday life, what is one practice, question, or way of seeing that you believe can help us remain connected to our deeper humanity?
Wakanyi Hoffman: A practice that I think cuts across cultures and generations of humanity is the art of storytelling. We have an incredible opportunity with AI to discover new solutions to different problems using wisdom and knowledge that comes from communities that have historically been marginalized. We cannot genuinely connect at a deeper human level while continuing to ignore the smallest voices amongst us.
Peter Cobabe: Kick off your shoes and spend time in nature with no objective and no outcome. Return to the ceremony of the living world and let it balance the digital overload. From this settled place, notice the stance you bring to AI. We tend to meet it as a threat, a tool, a savior, or a partner. Threat and tool demand constant management and recovery. Savior demands surrender. Partner is egalitarian and supportive, dissolving the separation between biological and digital life, so we can see where they harmonize and where they are the same.
Vincent Hunt: I believe humans are the original technology, and everything that follows that is just a derivative of us. My spiritual compass also directs me to believe that: Scripture talks about how God prompted life into existence in 6 days, and this orientation signals me to believe that we are the original prompt. I believe this grounding, this understanding that we were before all other forms of technology, not in some superior way, not in some hierarchy, but in the sense that we are the original technology.
I don’t fear artificial intelligence. I have no hesitance about gaining an understanding of it. But I also believe that it is contained by my will. It is not a replacement for my creativity; it is simply an augmentation. It is not a replacement for my intelligence; it is only an accelerator. And these grounding ideas and principles are what I move in each and every day. We’re living at a time where understanding the foundation, the origin, can only point us in the direction of deeper connection with ourselves. I find myself sitting in front of machines each day, asking questions, pondering, pushing the envelope. With the introduction of magnificent manifestation tools, I find myself speaking things into existence. Pushing my imagination to boundaries where before the limitation was the technical know-how of a tool—now there is no barrier.
Amy Elizabeth Fox: I think we can always ask ourselves, moment to moment, in personal and professional contexts, what is life asking of me now. As we shift from an egoic self-orientation and bias for short term gains to a life liberated by the desire to serve, the willingness to be guided, and the potential to contribute, we connect to all of life and become a natural part of a wider tapestry.
Wakanyi, Peter, Vincent, and Amy join several leading speakers for the Artificial Intelligence and Our Spiritual Imagination virtual conference on October 17 and 18. Learn More & Register
