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THREE MOUNTAINS

Author: George Pór Issue: 2023-12-20

THREE MOUNTAINS

by George Pór

*Originally published at: *THREE MOUNTAINS

An AI-assisted learning expedition game

[Image not included in the current archive. Images may be included in the future.]

Once upon a time…

Once upon a time, in the early decades of the 21st Century, the inhabitants of a beautiful blue planet were suffering.

That was when today’s wave of 1.2 billion climate refugees began, as streams of humans and animals escaping the rising seas started trickling towards higher ground, forced to leave behind their ancestral land and what gave them their livelihood. The time when millions died due to extreme weather conditions and 100s of millions of people got displaced due to water shortage. That was also the time when 100,000s soldiers and civilians, including women and children, perished in the wars on the Eastern edge of Europe, in the Middle East, and Africa.

Those numbers are not just numbers but human beings like you and me who had dreams… dreams squashed by manufactured disasters. They were our not-so-distant ancestors, parents, and grandparents who agonized about the world they left for us.

The obscene wealth inequalities accentuated their hardship, the opulent life of the super-rich while millions of people toiled in soulless workplaces in what a famous anthropologist of those years called “bullshit jobs” — employment without personal meaning and dignity. No wonder that most employees whose livelihood was tied to wage slavery were “disengaged” from work, to use a management euphemism of that epoch for “couldn’t care less.” The worst was the reigning hopelessness. Moloch somehow managed to etch into peoples’ minds: THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE!

Yet, Life was not defeated. First, students woke up in 1968, and their graffiti appeared on the walls of the Establishment:

“Be realistic; demand the impossible!” “Going through the motions kills the emotions.” “The freedom of others extends mine infinitely.” “We want structures that serve people, not people serving structures.” “We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom.” Soon, those slogans got plastered over with placards of consumerism. The yearning expressed in the graffiti went underground and grew mycelia. Videos, movement websites, and other exhibits in the “Early Decades” halls of the 21st Century History Museum show that 50-60 years later, many of those yearnings resurfaced in new generations. Those exhibits witness the emergence of such social movements as AI for Good, bioregionalism, community-based co-creation of health, decentralized science, eco-villages, food commons, open source everything, regenerative agriculture and finance, transformative education, workplace democracy, and more…

Those early decades were the worst and best times at once. A breakthrough into a never-dreamt of prosperity and fairness for all and a breakdown into barbarism were dancing on a knife’s edge. That was the backdrop on which a group of brave players of an AI-assisted learning expedition game called the Three Mountains came together and ventured into the unknown.

They didn’t know where the game would lead. They only knew that if the breakthrough had any chance, they needed to develop new capabilities individually and together and do it fast. They were heartened by a hunch that what they seek may be also seeking them.

Off the main hall of the “Early Decades” exhibition in the 21st Century History Museum, there is a screening room where you can watch the story of the THREE MOUNTAINS. The words you’ve just read were of the film’s narrator, which continues with what follows.

Happened in the Command School

** **A pivotal episode of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card plays in the Command School of the International Fleet. Ender Wiggins, a child prodigy of video games, destroys a fleet of starships attacking the Earth. Only after the end of the “game” does he learn: it was not a simulation but a real space battle that his fleet won, and they saved the Earth.

That story inspired the meta-plot of the THREE MOUNTAINS AI-assisted learning expedition, in which players are invited to participate in an adventure “game.” The stake of this expedition game couldn’t be higher. It’s about developing the individual and collective capabilities necessary to facilitate an AI-assisted transition to humanity’s Phase Shift into a world that works for all.

In this time between worlds, there are many manifestos, utopian descriptions of a desired future, as well as apocalyptic scenarios trying to prepare us for the dreadful Collapse.

We don’t know what is on the other side of the Phase Shift and even less so what it takes to get there. But we know that we can't get there with the level of consciousness and capabilities that caused the mess that we are in. That’s why the learning expedition game is not just a game, not a rehearsal, but a very real developmental journey for those who are ready to embark on it.

Gameplay: Going Up Mountains

** **The learning expedition “game” will play out in the mountains of PRESENCE Peak, SOVEREIGNTY Summit, and PLANETARY Plateau.

The quests and challenges on the journey toward PRESENCE Peak are focused on upgrading the players’ Sentience and Intelligence qualities. For some, that journey may amount to a life changing upgrade if they choose to engage in its transformative deep practices.  The latter will include communing with and absorbing actionable insights from nature, dialectical thought forms, contemplative practices, differentiated fields of listening, navigating moral/emotional dilemmas, enacting integral and shared mindfulness in the Sentience Basecamp, where all the players gather. Some of them will use what they are learning as a leverage for their professional development. Others will experience it as psycho-spiritual self-initiation. For yet others, it can mean both.

PRESENCE Peak is a high mountain in the gameworld. Many tried to climb to its top; few succeeded. The top is dressed in almost permanent clouds of fears, hopes, and unintegrated shadows, and ignorance. Those who climbed that far are not yet done with this mountain. If they manage to trek through and rise above the cloud layer, a majestic panorama of snow-white fields is waiting for them.  Their prize is the exquisite experience of pure Presence, beyond time and space.

[Image not included in the current archive. Images may be included in the future.]

When climbing to the SOVEREIGNTY Summit, the capability development challenges are coupled with a stronger focus on omni-positive choice-making and other aspects of Agency. On this leg of the journey, players grow competence in AI whispering and collaborative AI prompting, holding multiple perspectives, situational awareness, discernment or relevance realization, symmathesy (transcontextual mutual learning, à la Nora Bateson), AI-assisted discourse analysis, cultivating developmental relationships, combinatorial innovation, and more. The quests here, just as in the previous mountain, will involve the players’ discovery of ways to address their real-life challenges and opportunities. To succeed, the players must remove every barrier to effective collaboration and befriend complexity. The prize is the joy and never-before experienced level of individual and collective sovereignty.

On the last leg of the journey, those who successfully completed the first two can embark on the most exacting one — scaling the heights of the PLANETARY Plateau, where they can find a crucial clue to humanity’s Phase Shift. It won’t be easy to get there. Players will have to bring into play the best of their talents enhanced in the PERSONAL Peak and SOVEREIGNTY Summit mountains and grow new ones. For example, in cross-team collaboration supported by boundary objects and stigmergic collective intelligence. They will also have to bring into play their different modalities of knowing, in a concerted way, for compound outcomes.

Their ultimate challenge will be learning to activate their wisdom-guided Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence (CHI) of human and AI agents at increasing scale. When they meet it, the clue to humanity’s Phase Shift reveals itself.

Cycles and Generativity

Cycle 1 of this project, initiated by Future HOW, Center of Action Research for Regenerative Futures, consisted of developing its concept as action research and its core innovation idea, CHI:  meaning-aligned and wisdom-guided Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence of human and AI agents in (networks of) teams, communities, and organizations. This phase was supported by a mini-grant from Algovera AI, a cooperative developing decentralized AI.

Building on and improving that concept in Cycle 2, we had two Orientation workshops focused on the what and how of its implementation. The idea to design the action research as a serious game grew out of these workshops. They were delivered in partnership with RADAR DAO, a collective of 300+ futurists and innovators.

Cycle 3 is the game design cycle that we’re collaborating on with River DAO, “an organization designed to accelerate the transition to a generative society on a thriving planet.” The story of the THREE MOUNTAINS AI-assisted learning expedition game, presented here is the beginning of Cycle 3.

Cyclicity is one of the process characteristics of Future HOW’s Generative Action Research (GAR) that serves as the learning expedition’s methodology framework. The four distinctive qualities that make GAR generative are: self-sustaining, self-improving, self-evolving and self-propagating.

In the context of our research, the self-sustaining quality means that we balance change and continuity in its social field that includes both horizontal development (talents, skills) and vertical development (value systems, worldviews, complexity absorption).

The research is self-improving because it is  designed to continually improve individual and collective effectiveness through A) the action / assessment / feedback / learning loops and B) learning to generate new capabilities in response to emergent situations.

It is also self-evolving, i.e. designed to grow into more inclusive stages of consciousness with each new cycle.

It becomes self-propagating when it embodies its core innovation idea—meaning-aligned and wisdom-guided Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence of human and AI agents—in a way that inspires others to awaken new possibilities in their organizations and communities.

The embeddedness of the learning expedition in our partner organizations helps couple the algorithmic knowledge with human insights about contexts.

[Image not included in the current archive. Images may be included in the future.]

Where do we go from here? How about Cycle 4, Cycle 5, Cycle n? We don’t know because the emergent nature of GAR implies that the plan for each subsequent cycle flows out from the reflection about the previous one. However, a logical sequence following the game design in Cycle 3 would be the prototyping of the THREE MOUNTAINS learning expedition game as a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) in Cycle 4. Only then would it have a chance to self-propagate by letting its Collaborative Hybrid Intelligence model and practices be replicated in the specialized context of other organizations.

Invitation

Apart from the initial mini-grant supporting Cycle 1, this work has so far been self-founded by a very small team. To go further, we need help. Questions and feedback will be helpful. Support from any sponsoring organization or grant maker with a broad enough vision for putting AI in service of human and societal flourishing would be much appreciated.

We also welcome Expressions of Interest in collaboration from:

Send your message to george.por@gmail.com.

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