Contribution · Points
Contribution and LIGHTNET's shared future
I want the people who help LIGHTNET grow to share in its success. Authors bring their methods, their time and their audience's trust to the network. People try those methods in their lives and help us understand what works, what is unclear and what needs to change.
We can use that experience to improve practices and make ongoing support more useful. In the future, I also want to use it to develop Flourishing AI: AI that learns from the experience of different methods and participants across the network, rather than just one channel. My research goal is to teach it to better support long-term human well-being.
People who help develop LIGHTNET should receive a share of the value they create. I am building that principle into the project from the start.
What we learn from one another
A practice can be clear to its author and difficult for someone trying it for the first time. When someone explains where they got stuck, the author can see what needed a better explanation. An exercise may also be easy to do but fail to help as expected. The author needs to hear about that too.
I want people here to feel comfortable saying, "It didn't help." When we expect only good news, mistakes go unnoticed and a method stops developing.
People have their own reasons for keeping a journal and doing practices. They do not need to write more, share private details or pretend to feel better to earn approval or bonuses. An honest account helps a method develop, including an account of an attempt that did not work out.
How I want to recognize contribution
Every channel takes work: bringing a method together, preparing practices, checking responses and helping the first people find their feet. To keep track of that work, we are creating points — a ledger of contributions to LIGHTNET's development.
First, I want to recognize an author's work on their channel: preparation, launch and the first payment from an external customer. Later, I want authors to be able to create their own points for participation within their channels. That would let us distinguish an expert's contribution to LIGHTNET from people's contributions to the development of a particular method.
From people's experience to Flourishing AI
I am interested in what happens after a conversation with AI. Someone tried a practice — did it help? What was difficult? What changed a month later? A single good response cannot tell us that.
With people's permission, I want to use this experience to research and develop Flourishing AI: to understand which suggestions people can put into practice, whom different methods suit and when the support gets things wrong.
I want to make the terms of this exchange clear and agree them with participants: LIGHTNET provides support and tools, and people agree to share their experience to help develop shared AI. Before agreeing, each person must know which information will be used for their own support, which will be used for research and training, and who will have access to it. I do not consider keeping a journal, in itself, permission to train a model on it.
We do not sell personal stories or use them for advertising. If external models or services process information, people must know exactly what data is being shared with them and why.
The value we create should return to people
If shared AI begins to create economic value, I want to return a share of it to the people who helped bring it into being. This is a non-negotiable principle for LIGHTNET: developing the technology should benefit the participants whose methods and experience helped create it.
We have chosen the name Universal Light Income for this return of value. I see it as coming from future shared-AI revenue. Authors' subscription businesses have their own terms; they do not automatically become a source of payments to the whole network.
For now, ULI is a direction we are working towards, not a payout programme. We are creating points to record contributions; on their own, they give no right to money, tokens or equity.
If this is how you think about working together too, I invite you to join us. Tell me about your method and the people you help. Let's discuss what we could do together.