I’ve never been interviewed by a reverend — let alone, a reverend familiar with integral philosophy.

That is, until last week.

I was interviewed by of First Community Church — a “purple” church in Columbus, Ohio. He wanted to mine Faces of X, The Anti-Debate, and my thinking more broadly for insights on how to help his congregation bridge divides. We double-clicked on some key synthesis skills that can help members of his congregation — and you! Enjoy:

We live in a cacophony. Our online public square is characterized by binary thinking. In theory, public debates should strengthen democracy, by exposing citizens to diverse perspectives and reasoned arguments. But in practice, online so-called “debates” are further polarizing us, as debaters straw-man each other to score points for their tribe.

Meanwhile, humanity has a rich legacy of dialogic practices. Throughout history, wisdom traditions worldwide have developed unique forms of cooperative argumentation — from Talmudic havrutah (~500 CE) and Socratic dialogue (~400 BCE) to Tibetan Buddhist debate (~7th century CE) and Jesuit disputation (~16th century CE).

And thus: how might we draw from our legacy of dialogic wisdom to reinvigorate contemporary public discourse?

That’s the question I explored on the SuperDebate podcast, together with debate experts John Connor and John Hines. I double-clicked on the tradition I inherited — Judaism — which is particularly rich in the art of productive disagreement:

Would you like us to explore other ancient debate practices? Let me know 🤓

Sharing a sweet, personal story about planting a seed and watching it grow:

Back in 2009, I brought Pecha Kucha to Providence, Rhode Island. (Pecha Kucha is a monthly lightning talk series that started in Tokyo, before Ignite.)

When I left Providence in 2011, I handed Pecha Kucha off to someone else.

17 years later — last month — Pecha Kucha Providence invited me back for their 200th event, which earned them an award for being the LONGEST-RUNNING PECHA KUCHA OUTSIDE OF TOKYO. And by total coincidence, I was going to be in Providence that night — so I presented!

My presentation shared some of my creations since Pecha Kucha Providence — including Faces of X! And The Anti-Debate! And my most stunning masterpieces yet: my children 🥰

17 years and 200 events! It’s profound to plant something, let it go, and then watch it become more than you ever imagined. Keep going and growing, Pecha Kucha Providence!

And if they’ll have me back in another 17 years — in 2043 — I’ll happily share what I created next 😉

Ken Wilber is one of the most expansive philosophers of modern times.

He’s considered a meta-philosopher — because he’s done the extraordinary work of integrating disparate fields of knowledge into overarching frameworks. He’s integrated the Buddha with Freud, and more broadly, Eastern wisdom with Western psychology. He’s taken the rich tapestry of human wisdom, and woven it together into a unified map of reality.

Ken is an intellectual hero of mine, and the patron saint of much of my life’s work. (In my late teens, I used to call myself a “promiscuous pragmatic pluralist,” until I discovered “integral” 😉) And lucky for me, I recently got to sit down with him for a rich conversation at his home in Denver.

As an integrally-inspired producer and storyteller, I did something a little different: instead of conducting a typical interview about integral theory, I asked for Ken’s integral feedback on some of my current and upcoming productions — including The Anti-Debate. In that spirit, our conversation is less of a theoretical interview and more of a dynamic brainstorm — applying Ken’s integral wisdom to my creative sense-making projects.

There’s a bit of a wind-up, but stay with it. Whether you’re new to Ken’s work or have been studying integral theory for decades, you’ll get a rare glimpse of one of the great integrative minds of our time:

Support Ken Wilber on Patreon. Thank you to and Andrea Engle!

I still can’t believe he’s gone.

I’m talking about the illustrious — one of the most original thinkers on what comes after civilization as we know it, who passed away on May 27^th.

I’m fortunate to have called him a mentor and a friend, so I’d love to honor him. Or rather — Jim, I’d love to honor you. I know the word “metaphysics” made you reach for your pistol, but according to my metaphysics, you can hear me on some level, so — hey Jim! This one’s for you 😉

Thank you for your brilliance, honesty, spicy sense of humor, and ever-present sense of awe. I’m convinced that you cursed frequently and accentuated your drawl to throw us off, but nice try, we all knew you were a genius.

Thank you for the treasure trove you left behind with the Jim Rutt Show — a masterclass in genuine curiosity. Listening to you interview someone felt like watching a person turn an unfamiliar 3D object around in their hands. By the end of the episode, we all had an intimate sense of the whole. Thank you for having me on to interview me, and having me on to interview you!

Thank you for mentoring me, supporting my work, and always giving me generous and incisive feedback. You were the most consistent attendee of our monthly producer mastermind — even though you were the one with the most to teach and least to gain.

Thank you for remaining remarkably joyful — despite your deep understanding of how dire this moment is. You smiled often! And laughed! You were intimate with the planetary boundaries humanity is swiftly overshooting, yet you genuinely enjoyed the miracle of your life.

Ultimately, thank you for your extraordinary body of work helping humanity imagine a wiser, more omni-considerate civilization. If we build such a civilization, you will be largely to thank.

I confess I’m tormented by what you had yet to create. The book (or books!) you had yet to write. The ventures you had yet to launch. For me, The Anti-Debates you had yet to participate in. But you left an abundant legacy, so we must now take the baton. In your honor, may we bring your Game B vision to life! 💫💫💫💫

My Ignite talk on The Anti-Debate is live 🚀🚀🚀🚀

Wait, what’s The Anti-Debate again?

Refresher: what would a it look like if a debate assumed not that one person person was right and the other wrong, but that they were each holding different parts of the same bigger picture? The Anti-Debate is one humble answer to that question. It’s a new format for debate where participants build on each other’s insights, so that greater complexity can emerge.

Do you seek to engage people of different perspectives in a productive way — around whether around the family dinner table, in the classroom, or in the boardroom? If so, The Anti-Debate is for you! Watch the Ignite Talk, and share it with someone you’d love to find higher-order synthesis with:

Integral thinking has a marketing problem. (Which may be why you’ve never heard of it 😉.) Integral offers an extraordinary map for navigating reality, but has struggled to reach the mainstream.

So: how might we translate integral thinking for a broader audience — so that it can fulfill its tremendous potential?

That’s the question I’ll be exploring this year at ICON — a premiere conference on integral theory. The conference is from May 28th-31st in Denver, and its theme — echoing — is “Integral’s Role in Building a Post-Tragic Future.”

For my talk, I’ll first explore pieces of pop culture that have transmitted integral themes — from The Matrix, to Everything Everywhere All At Once, to Pluribus. Then I’ll draw from my own projects that have successfully translated integral ideas into public culture — including Faces of X, The Anti-Debate, and my 2025 TED talk. I’ll share concrete lessons for making integral legible, compelling, and relevant. Finally, I’ll close with what I consider to be the “killer app” for scaling integral consciousness: integral news. Because, in my humble opinion, the news is where the rubber meets the road for how people understand reality.

Attendees will leave my ICON talk inspired and ready to translate their integral work for a wider audience.

This is the North American bi-annual event for Spiralists, Meta-Theorists and Integralists. Join us? Get your tickets here.

The labs are racing to build artificial general intelligence. To what extent can open-source AI mitigate risk in the face of competitive dynamics and institutional decline?

That’s the question Synthesis Media took up at our second *live* Anti-Debate. (As a refresher: The Anti-Debate is a new format for debate where participants build on each other’s insights, so that greater complexity can emerge.) Denizen steward moderated between AGI House creator Jeremy Nixon and outgoing Executive Director at the :

The conversation ranged quite a bit, resulting in the lesson that the Anti-Debate question should be framed very specifically. (It’s easier to go from specifics to broad principles, than to start with broad principles and grope around for specifics.)

But some key points of synthesis emerged, including:

1. Centralization vs. Chaos is the Real Tradeoff — the core tension isn’t open vs. closed AI, but centralized control vs. decentralized risk. Governance must navigate both—mitigating concentration of power and the dangers of unrestrained proliferation.

2. Open Source is a Counterbalance, Not a Cure — open source mitigates some risks (like monopoly power) while introducing others (like misuse and instability). Open source should be treated as an important tool within a larger system, not a standalone solution.

3. We Need New Language for AI Governance — both sides point to the inadequacy of current frameworks for governing AI. The synthesis is that we need new paradigms that preserve agency while enabling coordination at unprecedented scale.

4. Innovation Must Be Paired with Social Stability— AI’s promise is immense, but so are the risks to our epistemic and social fabric. The synthesis is that progress requires advancing capability while actively protecting the conditions that make it beneficial.

More Anti-Debates are forthcoming! and I are planning one around the release of The AI Doc, featuring people from the film. To stay tuned, subscribe here:

I *finally* watched The AI Doc!

The AI Doc is a new documentary that follows a soon-to-be father as he investigates the existential risks and transformative potential of AI — exploring a middle ground between doom and utopian hype: “apocaloptimism.” Which if you know anything about Synthesis Media, you know that’s already our starting point.

First and foremost: it’s a STUNNING film. I deeply respect its intention. And various people featured in it are friends and colleagues — including Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin, , and David Evan Harris.

With that, a few humble critiques:

• The AI arms race didn’t show up until more than halfway through. At that point, I would have loved a broadening of the aperture — a shift from interviewing AI experts to interviewing people with expertise on how to transcend arms races. Like Audrey Tang and David Sloan Wilson.

• The interviewees didn’t talk to each other. Just monologues, woven together. Which I think made it hard to articulate a higher-order synthesis.

• The final call-to-action was too general. ‘Get involved. Call your Congresspeople.’ I would have loved more specifics. Like cultivating epistemic humility and participating in citizens assemblies.

That said, I still highly recommend watching the film! It’s now streaming. And when you do (or if you already did), I’d love to hear what you think 🤓

Please join me for an event that promises to be a landmark in our journey towards a more integrated and evolved future — the ICON integral conference this May 28th-31st in Denver, Colorado.

This is the North American Biannual Event for Spiralists, Meta-Theorists and Integralists 🤓

Brilliant speakers include: Ken Wilber, Roger Walsh, , and Keith Martin-Smith. I’ll be speaking about “Translating Integral for the Mainstream.”

For ICON 2026, speakers were invited to do more than present ideas — we were asked to generate resonant energy that extends beyond the stage and into the vibrant, informal conversations that will make this community resonate and realize our collective intelligence. This shared intention shapes an atmosphere where meaningful dialogue, spontaneous insight, and authentic connection become the most important part of the conference.

The conference theme, “Closer to Coherence,” reflects our progress — that we’ve evolved into a community standing at the threshold of sustaining this deeper intersubjective field. A living We-Space that participants can feel, explore, and co-create when there is a shared interest. Each accepted speaker proposal was chosen provided it could fulfill these aspirations and offered direct experiential practices that appealed to both newcomers and longtime members of our community.

“Creating the scene that creates the future” was the living intention behind the design of this year’s ICON experience. This means the conference is not something you simply attend — it is something you help bring into being. Your presence, intention, and willingness to engage are essential in energizing the shared field we step into together.

Come ready not only to learn, but to feel the resonant energy that arises between us — and to help hold it as it improves into coherence. You will find again and again, it’s the presence of engaged and capable participants that transmutes countless conversations, unexpected encounters, and shared moments into something deeply revitalizing, transformative, and special.

As a speaker, I’m looking forward not only to sharing my perspectives, but to hearing yours — to discovering how these dialogues move you, and to sensing together how resonance becomes a living force within the space we co-create. ICON 2026 isn’t just an event; it’s an invitation to help shape humanities emerging capabilities as it unfolds through us.

This is your chance to be part of an extraordinary gathering of minds and spirits. Reserve your ICON ticket here.

And if you come, be in touch! I’d love to connect in Denver 💫💫💫

Advanced AI is coming. Should the government step in to guide its development, or should we leave it up to the market? Or is there a more nuanced way to think about this topic?

Enter The Anti-Debate — a new format for debate where participants build on each other’s insights, so that greater complexity can emerge. The format starts out like a traditional debate, with opening statements and rebuttals, but then it goes further — guiding participants to explore how they might integrate their perspectives into a bigger picture. The Anti-Debate is the latest production of Synthesis Media.

A few weeks ago, Synthesis Media hosted our first *live* Anti-Debate! Game theory expert moderated an Anti-Debate on AI governance between former Trump AI advisor and OpenAI researcher-turned-whistleblower :

These were some key points of synthesis between Daniel and Dean:

• Shared concern about concentrated power — but different failure modes. Both converged on the idea that concentration of power is dangerous, whether in governments or corporations. The real question isn’t “state vs. market,” but how to prevent any actor (especially the executive branch or a dominant lab) from becoming unaccountable.

• Alignment is the central problem — and neither side fully trusts current actors to solve it. Despite different policy instincts, both agreed that AI alignment and safety are unresolved and urgent, and that neither markets nor governments can be blindly trusted to handle it well without better verification, auditing, and incentives.

• The real crux is a tradeoff: AI catastrophe risk vs. government overreach. The deepest synthesis emerged around a shared framing: at what point do risks from AI outweigh risks from centralized power? Both acknowledged their views would shift based on evidence — making this less about ideology and more about updating under uncertainty.

My favorite moment of the entire Anti-Debate was when Dean steel-manned Daniel, and Daniel visibly softened. Dean said, “I keep waiting for you to be wrong...but you’ve basically been right about timelines so far.” And Daniel responded, “I feel appreciated...and understood.” There was a powerful vibe shift. At that moment, the Anti-Debate evolved from adversarial to collaborative.

If you’d like to go deeper, check out this excellent write-up of the Anti-Debate by Thomas Brady. His key insight was that the AI governance debate assumes the relevant contest is government vs. industry. But the actual power topology is two private industry coalitions — frontier AI labs vs. defense tech like Palantir and Anduril — using state power against each other, with government serving as a tool rather than a counterweight. The question therefore isn’t ‘to what extent government regulation?’ but ‘whose values get encoded into AI systems as the republic itself decays?’ — which essentially brings us back to alignment.

More Anti-Debates are forthcoming! Liv and I are planning to do one around the release of The AI Doc, featuring people from the film. To stay tuned, subscribe here and on the Anti-Debate website.

Dear friends in the Frisco Bay,

You’re cordially invited to an Anti-Debate on artificial intelligence ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️

In fact, you’re invited to *two* local Anti-Debates on AI!

Here’s the context: The Anti-Debate is a new format for debate — where participants build on each other’s insights, so that greater complexity can emerge. It draws from a variety of dialogue and debate practices, from Talmudic havrutah to Bohmian dialogue. Come experience the Anti-Debate in action, and walk away with a more complex view of AI:

• On Monday 3/9 at LightHaven in Berkeley, game theory expert Liv Boeree will moderate between the lead author of AI2027 Daniel Kokotajlo and the lead author of America’s AI Action Plan Dean Ball. RSVP here.

• On Wednesday 3/11 at The Portal in Mill Valley, systems-change community organizer Jenny Stefanotti will moderate between the outgoing Executive Director at the Center for Humane Technology Daniel Barcay and AI researcher & entrepreneur Jeremy Nixon. RSVP here — if you’re not a Portal member, email me to get on the guest list: stephanie@infinitelunchbox.com

Love!
Stephanie

The gold of Faces of X is in the synthesis.

The format of the series is interesting, and the influencer stars are very talented, but the true payload is in the scripts’ attempt to articulate a synthesis perspective on complex social issues — like free speech, AI, and race.

Which is why it’s especially illuminating to discuss the synthesis with integral thinkers, like Corey deVos of Integral Life. (”Integral” refers to integral theory or meta-theory — a framework for understanding how different perspectives, disciplines, and worldviews fit together into a more complete picture of reality.) As a brilliant integral thinker, Corey is the perfect conversation partner with whom to discuss the synthesis section of Faces of X scripts — and explore the extent to which they fulfill their synthesis aspirations.

In my recent conversation with Corey, we dissect Faces of Free Speech from an integral perspective! Enjoy.

Deep Reckonings is a series of explicitly-marked deepfake videos that imagine the most morally courageous versions of our most controversial public figures. In one video, an imaginary Brett Kavanaugh wrestles with the way he responded to the sexual allegations against him. In another, an imaginary Mark Zuckerberg confronts his techno-utopianism. The series is an exercise in steel-manning where we often straw-man.

Launched in 2020, Deep Reckonings brought critical thinking to the emerging dialogue about the ethical implications of synthetic media — by proposing circumstances in which synthetic media might be used in prosocial ways. The project seeks not to deceive nor demean, but to imagine and inspire. In this spirit, Deep Reckonings asks: how might we use our synthetic selves to elicit our better angels?

In other words: deepfake it ‘til we make it 😉

Deep Reckonings won two Webby Awards in 2021. You can learn more about the project and watch the videos at: deepreckonings.com

What moves us to shift our political worldviews, transcend extremism, and make other kinds of transformative change?

Reckonings is a narrative podcast that explores how we change our hearts and minds.

Stories include that of a tough-on-crime prosecutor who revolutionized his understanding of criminal justice through a friendship with an inmate, the architect of Facebook business model who’s since devoted his life to tackling technology addiction, and a perpetrator and survivor of sexual assault who managed to work through it using restorative justice. Amid dystopian headlines, Reckonings takes on our thorniest issues — but in a way that’s transcendent.

During its tenure, Reckonings ranked in the top #40 documentary podcasts on iTunes, and was featured in The Constant Listener’s Best Podcasts. The show aired on radio stations nationwide, with a weekly spot on Oakland’s KGPC. Episodes were adapted for major podcasts, like Snap Judgment and Love+Radio.

If you’re new to the show, consider starting with these episodes:

• Episode #21 — a perpetrator and survivor of sexual assault who worked through it using restorative justice

• Episode #25 — the architect of Facebook’s business model who then devoted his life to tackling technology addiction

• Episode #18 — the reckoning of the former protégé of the late Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes

To hear lessons learned from the show about how people change their hearts and minds, check out this X thread and this interview on KALW’s Inflection Point.

To explore the entire Reckonings catalogue, visit: reckonings.show

Where I’m Coming From is an experience designed to build empathy by speaking other people’s perspectives in first-person.

Inspired by South Africa’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission and commissioned by San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, participants first write testimonies about a specific issue. Then they’re invited to speak each other’s testimonies aloud, as if they are their own.

Where I’m Coming From has been facilitated in diverse settings on diverse issues — from a small Monterey diner immediately after the 2016 election, to Facebook HQ between members of its social science team and outside social scientists.

This short video illustrates the first installation of Where I’m Coming From — at the Yerba Buena Center in 2016:

We live in a cacophony. Our dominant media business model — based on maximizing engagement — is polluting our information commons, resulting in shorter attention spans, binary thinking, and hyper-polarization.

In theory, public debates should strengthen democracy, by exposing citizens to diverse perspectives and reasoned arguments. But in practice, debates are further polarizing us, as debaters straw-man each other to score points for their tribe. Recent U.S. presidential debates may not even qualify as actual debates, since participants are engaged less in a structured back-and-forth about opposing views, and more in an unstructured barrage of attack lines. Quoting The Consilience Project, “when open communication cannot be used to resolve conflict and coordinate behavior, societies are driven towards chaos, war, oppression, and authoritarianism.”

Meanwhile, humanity has a rich legacy of dialogic practices. Throughout history, wisdom traditions worldwide have developed unique forms of cooperative argumentation, such as Jesuit disputation, Tibetan Buddhist debate, and Talmudic havrutah.

In havrutah, for example, Jews study the Talmud in pairs because it’s by virtue of having different perspectives that students sharpen each other’s intellect. In Socratic dialogue, probing questions are used to stimulate critical thinking, and have become a foundational element of Western philosophical and educational traditions. In more modern times, the Oxford-style debate emerged to enable rigorous yet productive argumentation, and has been adopted in academic and public debate settings worldwide.

It’s time to draw from our legacy of dialogic wisdom, and innovate a debate format that can meet the moment.

Introducing The Anti-Debate — a new and open-source format for debate where participants build on each other’s insights, so that greater complexity can emerge.

The Anti-Debate derives its name from William MacAskill, philosopher and co-founder of Effective Altruism. In 2017, he proposed “anti-debates” as an alternative to a traditional debate – which would focus on seeking truth instead of defending sides. The idea was then popularized by philosophers Peter Limberger and Connor Barnes – who imagined how anti-debates could transform the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Since 2022, think tank Perspectiva has been experimenting with its own form of antidebate. The Anti-Debate you see here — and on the project website — is Synthesis Media’s manifestation of a big idea.

In order to create this Anti-Debate, I researched a variety of dialogue and debate practices – from Socratic dialogue to Oxford Debate to Bohmian Dialogue. I cobbled together a draft format, conducted trial runs, and came out with a v1 Anti-Debate that Synthesis Media is now launching to the world.

To be clear, the Anti-Debate is not anti-debate! It actually starts out like a traditional debate with opening statements and rebuttals, but then, it doesn’t stop there. It goes further! Thank you for clarifying your different perspectives. Now that you’ve put your ingredients on the table, it’s time to make something new 😉

You’re invited to use and remix the Anti-Debate! Naturally, it’s useful for people who facilitate debates, like podcast hosts and educators. But if you seek to engage different perspectives in a productive way — whether around the family dinner table, or in the boardroom, or in the bedroom — the Anti-Debate is for you.

Zooming back out: imagine if we used our different perspectives on our most important issues not to further divide us, but to see those issues with greater complexity. Ultimately, the goal of the Anti-Debate is not to change minds, but to expand minds. We’re not looking to convert you to me, or me to you, but to give all of us a more comprehensive view. We’re on the same team to sharpen each other’s intellect. Hence the tagline of the Anti-Debate: a debate that everyone can win.

And like anything, the Anti-Debate can be weaponized. Again quoting The Consilience Project, “individuals must therefore continually innovate in their approach to communication. We must work together always to find new ways to break the hegemony of bad faith. This should be done as if the future of civilization depends on it—because it does” (emphasis added).

To learn more about the Anti-Debate, check out the How-To Guide, and adapt it for your purposes — visit: anti-debate.org

Big news: we’re getting a rebrand!

Kind of.

Here’s what’s up: Faces of X is a project of Synthesis Media — a non-profit production studio devoted to expanding hearts and minds. If you like Faces of X, you’ll love Synthesis Media’s other work. Our next project is rolling out (The Anti-Debate), so it’s time to change expand our name from “Faces of X” to “Synthesis Media” 😉

On this Substack……you’ll still find Faces of X! (If you want exclusive Faces of X content, visit the dedicated Faces of X website.) You’ll also find other Synthesis Media projects, from The Anti-Debate — a new format for debate where participants build on each other’s insights, so that greater complexity can emerge, to Deep Reckonings — a series of explicitly-marked deepfake videos that imagine morally courageous versions of our public figures.

Don’t let the name change fool you! Stick around. Much more excitement to come ✨✨✨✨

What happens when you try to fix public debate instead of win it?

I just did a FUN Substack Live with the illustrious of Uncomfortable Conversations. We talked about the difference between both-sides-ism and synthesis. We also talked about my upcoming project: The Anti-Debate — a new format for debate where participants build off each other’s insights, so that greater complexity can emerge.

Enjoy!

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

SZEPS LIVE: "A Better Way to Debate?" with Stephanie Lepp

What happens when you try to fix public debate instead of win it…

Listen now

8 months ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Josh Szeps and Stephanie Lepp

And if you do, check out our last conversation about Faces of X.

Starring game theory expert , Faces of AI integrates different perspectives on artificial intelligence into a synthesis view.

CREDITS

• Brought to you by: Synthesis Media

• Director: Stephanie Lepp

• Script: Stephanie Lepp and Liv Boeree

• Starring: Liv Boeree

• Music: design school, by Rob Voigt

• Special thanks: Igor Kruganov, Jonah Sachs, Daniel Rechtschaffen, Matt Pirkowski, Erik Brynjolfsson, Corey deVos, Jeff Salzman, and Zoë Haney

POINTS OF SYNTHESIS

• All perspectives have some partial truth, but some perspectives are more incentivized than others to ignore their blind spots — like those who have a financial stake in the AI arms race

• Different perspectives have identified real failure modes we need to avoid: too fast, too slow, too centralized, and too anarchic

• AI’s complexity is greater than any one individual mind (or perspective) can grasp

• We need more transparency from the labs — and lawmakers who actually know what to do with that transparency

• We need whistleblower protections, but we also need — but we also need to address the competitive pressures that make whistleblowing necessary in the first place

• We need critical AI decisions to be made by representatives of humanity’s collective interest — but only if “collective” means global, e.g. including China and the Global South

• This isn’t about being pro- or anti-AI, but about collaboratively facing the complex reality of AI

• A rite of passage prepares us for making a developmental leap — like from childhood to adulthood. For humanity, AI is our next one. Because if we can coordinate to build something this powerful, safely, together, we’ll have grown up in a meaningful way.

SCRIPT

ACCELERATIONIST: Artificial intelligence is the GREATEST FORCE MULTIPLIER ever known.

PESSIMIST: Um, I think you mean the most DESTRUCTIVE force ever known.

ACCELERATIONIST: Cancer, poverty, climate change — AI solves it all. Every day we delay is another day of preventable suffering. Time to LET IT RIP.

PESSIMIST: More like time to PULL THE PLUG. We’re racing to build minds vastly more capable than ours with zero guarantee they’ll care about us! Our greater intelligence has NOT fared well for other species.

AI SKEPTIC: Come on! Artificial super-intelligence is DECADES (if not centuries) away! AI today is just sophisticated pattern-matching with a marketing budget. We’ve got plenty of time.

GEOPOLITICAL REALIST: Time is precisely what we DON’T have. While y’all debate hypotheticals, CHINA is building AI for social control. If WE slow down, AUTHORITARIAN AI wins.

CHINA: [in Mandarin with subtitles] “Authoritarian AI”? YOUR social media ALREADY hijacks your citizen’s minds. WE use technology for social harmony and education — YOU use it for addiction and profit.

AI BUILDER: Which is why WE need to not only get there FIRST, but also get it RIGHT. We care about the safety of our users! Trust us, we’re on it.

GEOPOLITICAL REALIST: I admire your optimism, but the genie is out of the bottle — the question isn’t WHETHER we build it, but WHO gets there first.

RISK REALIST: But we don’t even know what “there” is! We have no idea what awaits us with AI, and especially not super-intelligent AI. Plus, we did technically “get there first” with social media, and we’re more DIVIDED and confused than we’ve ever been.

PESSIMIST: Well, we’ll all be unified in DEATH if these AI labs rush on super-intelligence. [Looks at AI BUILDER] Do you even realize that you’re building a technology more dangerous than nukes, and you expect it to not incinerate civilization?

AI BUILDER: But we DID create nuclear safeguards, and nukes HAVEN’T incinerated civilization.

RISK REALIST: Yeah but we had so many nuclear close calls during the Cold War, frankly it’s a miracle we’re still here…

HUMANIST: The real miracle is the beautiful web of life we’re all a part of — and I worry that it may not be able to co-exist with artificial intelligence. We may be bringing about our own obsolescence.

ACCELERATIONIST: More like bringing about our transcendence! AI can liberate us from the biological constraints that have caused MILLENNIA of suffering!

HUMANIST: Biology has developed from MILLIONS of years of evolution, and you want to alter it after a few years of AI research? That’s not wisdom my dear, that’s hubris.

ACCELERATIONIST: Tell that to the parents watching their children die of diseases we could have already cured. Your luddite thinking is trapping us in Humanity 1.0 when we could be Ascending the Kardashev scale and spreading intelligence across the universe!

AI SKEPTIC: “Ascending the Kardashev scale,” what?! All I see are a bunch of trumped up auto-complete bots being treated like sci-fi oracles. Frankly you sound a bit like one yourself.

ETHICS ADVOCATE: EXCUSE ME! While you’re all debating philosophical fantasies, AI is harming REAL PEOPLE RIGHT NOW ! Gig workers are getting replaced by algorithms! Facial recognition is turning minority neighborhoods into digital police states! Data centers emit more carbon than some countries — while you [looks at ACCELERATIONIST] claim it’s a climate solution!

And don’t get me started on wealth inequality — the rich keep just getting richer and richer, while YOU [looks at AI BUILDER] automate away all our livelihoods!

PESSIMIST: And STILL, none of this matters if we build a super-intelligence.

AI BUILDER: Look, every transformative technology creates challenges. The printing press ALSO destabilized society. We don’t abandon fire because it can burn us — we LEARN how to use it. AI is no different.

RISK REALIST: AI is WILDLY different — it isn’t just ONE civilizational risk, it’s an accelerant to ALL of them! Bio-terrorism… drone swarms… cyber-attacks… social unrest… AI is turbo-charging them ALL!

[DEVOLVES INTO CHAOS]

SYNTHESIS: My darling humans. How wonderful that you all care so much about what may well be THE most consequential technology ever built.

The issue is: you each think you’re exclusively right. But the reality is: you’re all partially right. Which means: you’re partially wrong. And some of you are highly incentivized to ignore your blind spots.

There are many wrong ways to build AI: too fast, too slow, too centralized, too anarchic. So you have all found different failure modes we need to avoid.

The truth is: none of you yet know how to navigate this landscape because AI’s complexity is greater than any one individual mind can grasp.

So, the task at hand is to identify the kernels of truth you’re each holding, and then integrate them into a more comprehensive view.

GEOPOLITICAL REALIST: And how exactly are we gonna do that?

RISK REALIST: Well, we’d need a better sense of what’s actually going on in the labs. So how about some transparency? Like maybe the labs can disclose their development process and their safety protocols LONG BEFORE they deploy?

AI BUILDER: But only if lawmakers actually know what to do with that!

ETHICS ADVOCATE: And how about some whistleblower protections — so employees can actually report risks without facing retaliation?

HUMANIST: And what if all these monumental decisions aren’t made in closed boardrooms, but by representatives of humanity’s collective interest?

SYNTHESIS: Yes, perhaps!

But ultimately, this isn’t about being pro- or anti-AI, but about collaboratively facing the complex REALITY of it. It’s about staying focused on your part, but within the context of the larger WHOLE.

In other words, it’s about doing the synthesis. I mean, of course I would say that ;)

But really, we do need all your viewpoints.

Artificial Intelligence is humanity’s most complex challenge, but it’s also our greatest opportunity. It’s our rite of passage. Because IF we can coordinate to unleash AI’s power responsibly — then we can coordinate to do anything.

CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

• In the words of Tristan Harris, “the upsides [of AI] don’t prevent the downsides, but the downsides can prevent the upsides.”

• When it comes to AI, the defining polarity is: innovation and safety. Some perspectives are holding the mantle of innovation – of the unprecedented breakthroughs AI could unleash. Other perspectives are holding the mantle of safety — warning that what we build could spiral out of control. The idea isn’t to choose between innovation and safety, but to hold both in dynamic equilibrium.

• We are not building AI. What’s building AI is: our misaligned incentives — where anyone who pauses for safety gets crushed by competitors, forcing everyone to race towards risks that nobody wants. Whatever is the proper balance between innovation and safety, we’ll never strike it with our misaligned incentives at the helm.

• AI labs can’t “solve alignment internally,” because alignment is upstream of the labs — in the incentive landscape in which AI is funded, developed, and used.

• Our most feared AGI scenario is already here. We already can’t pull the plug on something that’s perpetually upgrading its capacity and whose “objective function” creates major collateral damage. We’re already in a situation where no one wants microplastics in our lungs and oceans, but no one can stop it. And AI turbocharges that until we drown in paperclips.

• Look at what happened with OpenAI. They started as a NON-profit devoted to ensuring AI benefits humanity…and pivoted into a capped-profit devoted to winning the AI arms race. Companies like OpenAI think they’re working on the hardest problem, but doing anything other than racing for AI dominance would be much harder.

• This isn’t about being pro-AI or anti-AI, but about creating the conditions conducive to safe innovation. For example, by creating a global citizens assembly for AI, or shifting from GDP to a measure that accounts for more of what we truly value.

• At the deepest level, changing the incentive landscape is about zooming out from our desired part – GDP, biodiversity, or whatever – to serve the whole we’re all part of. It’s about shifting from a body’s organs competing against each other, to coordinating in service of the body’s overall health.

• The most talented engineers in the world think they’re working on the hardest problem. But the hardest problem isn’t building AGI. It’s coordinating to build AGI that’s truly win-win.

• In the words of Elizabeth Robson, AI is “accelerating ecological overshoot.” To provide one data point, according to the Civilization Research Institute’s AI Industry Trends, Rhetoric, and Risks, in order to train their first AI, OpenAI generated approximately 965 thousand metric tons of mining waste rock.

REFERENCES

• The Last Invention, Longview with Andy Mills (2025)

• AI 2027, Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, Romeo Dean (2025)

• Silicon Dreams and Carbon Nightmares: The Wide Boundary Impacts of AI with Daniel Schmachtenberger, The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens (2024)

• Daniel Schmachtenberger & Liv Boeree on AI, Moloch & Capitalism, Win-Win with Liv Boeree (2023)

• The AI Dilemma, Your Undivided Attention with Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin (2023)

• Daniel Schmachtenberger: Artificial Intelligence and The Superorganism, The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens (2023)

• The Dark Side of Conscious Ai | Daniel Schmachtenberger, Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal (2023)

• Bohm & Krishnamurti, J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm (1980)

  ---