Can AI Help Us Be More Human?

[This is the first of a 3-part Awakin Call Series. For more info, visit awakin.ai/murmur]

Dr. Richard Davidson - Dr. Richard Davidson—Richie—is the Founder & Director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, best known for his groundbreaking work studying emotion and the brain. A friend and confidante of the Dalai Lama, he is a highly sought after expert and speaker, leading conversations on well-being on international stages such as the World Economic Forum, where he served on the Global Council on Mental Health. Time Magazine named Davidson one of "The 100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2006. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017.

In 1992, an unexpected fax arrived from Dharamsala that would reshape the trajectory of neuroscience itself: the Dalai Lama challenged Davidson to turn his research tools away from anxiety and depression toward kindness and compassion, asking simply, "Why can't you use those same tools to study positive qualities of the mind?" When Davidson met His Holiness in person, he experienced a startling transformation—his anxiety completely dissolved within fifteen seconds, and he felt he had found the most secure place on Earth. This pivotal encounter emboldened the self-described "closet meditator" to make his own contemplative practice public and redirect his life's work toward understanding how mental training can transform not just individual brains, but create a culture of human flourishing.

Srinija Srinivasan - Srinija Srinivasan was Yahoo's fifth employee and Vice President/Editor-in-Chief for fifteen years, while chairing SFJAZZ's board through the creation of the SFJAZZ Center. Former vice chair of Stanford's Board of Trustees, she co-founded Loove, a music venture serving artistic values, and Jubilee College, integrating work, study, and contemplative practice.

Born in India to a polymath mother who mastered Sanskrit, art history, and computer science, and raised in Lawrence, Kansas where Hindu cosmology met Midwestern Christianity, Srinija describes "coming into the world downstream with so much love" as the youngest of three brilliant siblings. Her abiding curiosity about human consciousness—wondering from childhood what possibilities arise from believing spirit dwells within and all around us—guided an unlikely path from artificial intelligence at Stanford through the frontlines of tech's explosive dawn, while her parallel years immersed in jazz revealed improvisation as a blueprint for mutual liberation: not "how do I control?" but "who must I be so you can be who you're meant to be?"

Nipun Mehta:  Nipun Mehta is the founder of ServiceSpace, a global community working at the intersection of technology, volunteerism and a gift culture. As a designer of large-scale social movements that are rooted in small acts of service and powered by micro moments of inner transformation, his work has uniquely catalyzed networks of community builders grounded in their localities and rooted cultivating deeper connection -- with themselves, others and larger systems. Today, ServiceSpace reaches millions every month, is powered by thousands of volunteers, and blossoms into ever-expanding local and virtual service projects that aim to ignite a "whole great than the sum of its parts". Nipun was honored as an "unsung hero of compassion" by the Dalai Lama, not long before former U.S. President Obama appointed him to a council for addressing poverty and inequality in the US. Yet the core of what strikes anyone who meets him is the way his life is an attempt to bring smiles in the world and silence in his heart: "I want to live simply, love purely, and give fearlessly. That's me."