Narratives are important…
Consider these two different narratives, for example:
Frederick by Leo Lionni is a beloved children's book about a family of field mice preparing for winter. While most of the mice are busy gathering food and supplies, one mouse named Frederick seems to be doing nothing. When the others ask him why he isn’t working, Frederick explains that he is gathering different things—sun rays, colors, and words. As winter arrives and supplies start to dwindle, the mice grow cold and tired. That's when Frederick steps in, sharing the warmth of the sun, the beauty of colors, and stories that uplift their spirits. His "work" turns out to be just as important as gathering food, showing that creativity, imagination, and art can nourish the soul in difficult times.
The Grasshopper and the Ant is a fable that contrasts the hard work of an ant with the carefree life of a grasshopper. In the story, the ant is diligent, always gathering food and preparing for the future, while the grasshopper spends its time dancing and shining in the night without worrying about the days ahead. When winter arrives, the ant has plenty of food stored due to its hard work. However, the grasshopper, having not prepared, finds itself hungry and cold.
Narratives are like the glasses we put on to see the world through. If your glasses are yellow, you see the world more yellow; if your glasses are green, you see the world more green.
What narratives are we telling each other and ourselves in the field of AI safety? In the world of AI safety, it feels like we are stuck between dystopian and fear-driven stories, which feed into a sense of separation above all.
How can we begin to see many different narratives and many different future possibilities?
How can one of humanity’s most beautiful abilities—our ancestral technology of imagination—help us create these new narratives?
https://youtu.be/56fGZybF1UU?si=6CwCwkvCnjuEZXSW
Hi, I am Ayşegül Güzel, a community facilitator since 2011. I founded the biggest time bank/alternative economic community in the world, bringing people together for personal, interpersonal, and systemic change. I have opened up hundreds of co-creation spaces where deeper connection happens.
Originally from Turkey, I am now based in Spain and have two nationalities. Five years ago, I was investigated as one of the organizers of one of the biggest demonstrations in Turkey, Istanbul's Gezi Park protests. These demonstrations were grassroots movements and were not organized by me, even though I participated in this movement like other millions. This personal story created a new narrative for me about environments of fear and the controlling power of fear, and the effect of this fear narrative on separation: "us and others."
Three years ago, I entered the data science field and began to work as a data scientist, where I became interested in AI Ethics and AI Safety. Right now, I am working as a research fellow at Humane Intelligence, which is an NGO creating a community of AI evaluators. I am also finishing the BlueDot Impact Safety Fundamentals course. In this new field I am taking part in, I am seeing very similar narratives: separation, dystopia, and fear.
This experiment is the final project of BlueDot Safety Fundamentals and started as a personal inquiry into looking for hope and how I can add value with one of my main interest areas: the power of imagination. I have been working with my dreams and visualization techniques from ancestral wisdom, such as shamanic journeys and sound journeys, for many years now.
I have read many different materials around imagination, visualization, future techniques, and the book Critical Hope, and have set an intention around: