A five-week learning journey with The Emerald Podcast’s Josh Schrei & Special Guests

Re-imagining ethics as actual embodied practice

🗓️ Dates: April 18, 25, May 2, 9, 16

🗺️ Place: Online

🪄 Intention

👾

The rise of generative AI has generated a rush of conversation about benefits and risks, sentience and intelligence, and the need for ethics and regulatory measures. Yet ‘ethics’ — in an era of never-before-seen technological powers and relentless rush to market — can’t simply be imposed from the outside. The proliferation of AI asks us to look deeper into how human beings have historically constructed individual, ecological, and societal frameworks in which world-altering powers can live sustainably — and to re-imagine ethics as actual embodied practice.

🪄

Storyteller Josh Schrei made waves with his podcast episode ‘So You Want to Be a Sorcerer in the Age of Mythic Powers’, which challenged listeners to start to explore AI through the lens of myth, story, and magic. When we do so, we see that the drive to create AI goes beyond narratives of ingenuity, progress, profit, or the creation of a more controllable, convenient world.

🏋‍♀️

Buried deep in this urge to tinker with sentience are core human drives — the longing for mystery, the want to live again in a world of great powers beyond our control, and ultimately, the unconscious longing for guidance and initiation. When we understand the deeper drives at play, we can begin to establish personal practices and communal frameworks that temper such drives. This has implications for how we live, how we practice, how companies structure themselves, and even how we code.

📚

In this five-part course, Josh and special guests will explore a vision of embodied ethics in the age of AI — what it means to shift our individual, ecological, and societal vision and practice to accommodate the rise of unprecedented powers.

ℹ️ Logistics

5 Live Virtual Sessions | 90min, + optional 30min Q&A

Thursdays 12 - 2pm PT (April 18, April 25, May 2, May 9, May 16)
Presentation x discussion in smaller groups
Recordings will be available for those who can’t attend live

Pre-recorded guest lectures with experts and role models (see below)
Weekly Office Hours (Mondays 12 - 1pm PT) with Andrew and community
Ongoing questions and practice suggestions for students to explore on their own time
Ongoing access to all course materials
1 year of free access to regular Wise Innovation Project's office hours

Everything is optional!

✅ Enrollment

Student Rate: $300 for students and practitioners with little expendable income
Professional Rate: $600 for professionals and those able to contribute a little more to the vision
Executive Rate: $900 for those of greater financial means (including access to corporate budget) who understand the amount of work that goes into creating a course like this and want to support the long-term vision

🎟️ Enroll Here

📚 Course Outline

Click toggle for more details

‣

Part 1: The Mythic Implications of AI

‣

Part 2: Individual Initiation in the Age of AI

‣

Part 3: Ecologies of Accountability

‣

Part 4: Re-prioritizing Slow Growth

‣

Part 5: Towards Embodied Intelligence

🧑‍💻 Team

Joshua Michael Schrei (Teacher) is the founder and host of The Emerald podcast, which draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and mythos to challenge conventional narratives on politics and public discourse, meditation and mindfulness, art, science, literature, and more. A writer, teacher, and a lifelong student of the cosmologies and mythologies of the world — in particular, the Indian subcontinent — Josh has sought to navigate the living, animate space of the imagination and advocate for a world that prioritizes imaginative vision. Josh has taught intensive courses in cosmology, mythology, and somatic disciplines for nearly 20 years.

Michael Gregory Garfield (Host) is the host of Future Fossils Podcast, a transdisciplinary discussion series exploring the edges of the known and knowable. Trained in paleontology before touring the world as an artist and musician, Michael joined The Santa Fe Institute in 2018 to host their flagship systems science podcast Complexity. He left academia for the second time in 2023 to work for a non-profit AI startup and write two books about the past and future of human-technology co-evolution. In his spare time he has released over 100 hours of original music for film, yoga, deep listening, and journeywork.

Elena Lake Polozova (TA) is a former machine learning engineer at Meta, turned private-practice bodyworker and student of the mythosomatic. She also has 6 years of experience in math, computer science, and physics academia, as well as deep inquiries into nature connection, emotional spaceholding, and dance. She’ll bring her interdisciplinary backgrounds across embodiment and technology to help answer your questions at the office hours.

Andrew Murray Dunn (Producer) is a student at the intersection of human development and innovation, currently focused on co-activating Wise Innovation Project. He serves as a trans-disciplinary visionary and pollinator, helping people bring ideas to life in ways that are more awesome for all involved. Most recently serving as Innovation Lead at Center for Humane Technology, Andrew holds 10+ years of early stage startup operations experience, most notably in stewarding Siempo: a pioneering Public Benefit Corporation that developed an award-winning, open source, humane smartphone interface.

🎙️ Guest Speakers

Mara Zapeda Co-founder, Zebras Unite

Turquoise Sound Leadership, Culture & Strategic Advisory

Sara Jolena Wolcott Ecotheologist, Sequoia Samanvaya

Evan Sharp Co-founder, Pinterest

🙋🏼‍♀️ FAQ

‣

Who is this for?

‣

I can’t make these dates / times. Will you offer the course again?

‣

Are there any volunteer opportunities?

‣

Contact us

This course is the first major offering from Wise Innovation Project, an emerging non-profit initiative with a mission to re-imagine innovation education.

[COPY] Embodied Ethics in The Age of AI