People remain the authors of their lives

I have worked with technology for many years, and I am fascinated by what AI is becoming capable of. It helps us write software, investigate complex questions and create things that once required a large team. These capabilities will change work and our sense of our own place in the world.

But a person's worth does not depend on whether they can outperform a machine. Relationships with loved ones, our inner lives, curiosity and enjoyment of life do not lose their value when technology becomes more productive than we are.

I choose to direct AI's capabilities towards human development itself. I am interested in how it can help us better understand our feelings, find meaning in what we do, learn to care for ourselves and build relationships. Human well-being deserves the same inventiveness and attention we devote to developing machines.

We are surrounded by other people's answers to how we should live. Family, society, culture and people we admire all influence our desires. Increasingly intelligent systems add another persuasive voice to that conversation.

I do not want the power of that voice to become power over a person. Even a very intelligent AI has no right to decide what you should devote your life to, which relationships to keep or what counts as success.

Help can offer an explanation, suggest a practice or reveal a possibility you had not noticed. You have the right to disagree, try something different or change your goal. Experts can be wrong too. Trust in an expert must leave room for your experience and your own decisions.

How we feel affects how we see the future. When we have little energy, even a familiar task can feel impossible. When we find something to draw strength from, we may notice a possibility we could not see before or find the courage for a conversation we have long put off.

Our actions change us too. You might set a boundary and discover that a relationship can withstand it, or try a new activity and find an interest. Acknowledging exhaustion and letting yourself recover can also change how you see yourself and choose to live.

I call this ambition the recursive development of human agency and well-being. We learn more about ourselves through living, draw on what we have learned and discover new possibilities. I want technology to help sustain this work over years, remember what matters and give people access to suitable methods.

Everyone will have pauses, unsuccessful attempts and changes of plan. Help matters in those periods too. I want it to leave people better able to manage their own lives and support those close to them, rather than afraid to make decisions without AI.

I am building LIGHTNET as a network of people who have devoted themselves to helping others. They bring their methods, experience and understanding of life. Technology gives them a way to share their approaches with more people while remaining attentive to each person's circumstances.

We need different authors: help needs to account for a person's language, culture, family and everyday circumstances. A single model of a good life cannot contain that diversity.

I want to work with people who are willing to listen to feedback and reconsider their approach. If a practice did not help or made things worse, we cannot demand that someone continue out of faith in the method. How they feel and what is happening in their life matter more than a compelling story about the result.

My bet is that AI and new forms of interaction will open the way to breakthroughs in the scientific study of people and their inner lives. We will be able to explore more deeply how experiences, actions and life circumstances connect, and why a particular practice helps some people but not others.

At LIGHTNET, I want to work with experts to study psychological, emotional, body-based and holistic practices: what happens after a conversation, who a method suits and whether its benefits last. Each approach needs to be evaluated separately.

This is how I see the direction of Flourishing AI: developing AI that can better support long-term human well-being. Participants in this work need to understand how their experience is used and knowingly agree to that exchange. We do not sell personal stories or use them for advertising.

If AI takes on more work and creates more value, I want people to have access to the benefits. Growth in technological capability alone does not guarantee that.

That is why returning value to participants is a non-negotiable principle of LIGHTNET. Future shared AI should benefit the people whose methods and experience helped it develop. We call this direction Universal Light Income. It is not a payment programme today; I explain the principle of returning value and the exchange with participants on the page about contribution and our shared future.

We can begin with what people already know how to do for one another: help make sense of difficult things, learn, navigate change, and find energy and an interest in life. I am building LIGHTNET to expand what people can do to help one another and give them more ways to live by what matters to them.

If this is a future you believe in, I invite you to build it together.

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