ABOUT Awakin AI

Awakin AI explores beyond-market innovations at the intersection of computing, community and compassion capacities. Our mission is to enhance artificial intelligence with natural wisdom, by infusing AI with timeless principles of inner transformation, the grounded know-how of spiritual practitioners, and the everyday kindness of people around the world.

We want to optimize for human connection, and ask radically different design questions. How can human labor, driven by intrinsic motivation and love, contribute to the unique curation of datasets? How can this collective effort result in meaningful applications that not only respond to today's complex challenges but also open the door for social emergence? How do we retain a throughline from our values to organizing principles to measurable impact to collective narratives and the emergence of compassion?

The vision builds on almost three decades of curating inspiring stories and cultivating deep relationships, across continents and communities, guided by three simple yet powerful principles: lead with small acts of intrinsically motivated service.

Our services, including hosting AI-powered chatbots and wisdom-sharing platforms, are freely given to individuals and groups aligned with our spirit of generosity. From sharing insights of historical figures like Vinoba Bhave, to amplifying the voices of thought leaders like Sharon Salzberg, to building collective bots drawing from indigenous knowledge, we envision making this timeless wisdom accessible to everyone, in myriad new forms, using novel and dynamic interfaces.

When it comes to AI, any model is only as good as its data. What else is data other than millions and billions of small acts made visible? When these acts are of kindness, generosity and goodwill, curated with care, attention and intentionality, data can become a collective manifestation of service and a catalyst for regenerative natural wisdom.

Building on unique datasets from our many networks, we offer the following services and infrastructure:

  • Pre-trained and fine-tuned AI models
  • Centralized computing resources (GPU)
  • Application platforms like chatbots and search tools
  • Data hosting and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
  • Dataset curation and annotation

Driven by our principles, and supported by a network with thousands of volunteers, we're nurturing a special blend of wisdom-driven technology. Join us in shaping a future where AI and human values converge to create a more mindful, compassionate world.

To dive deeper into our vision, check out some of these links:

  • AI + Heart Intelligence: a popular address at global summit in Sweden
  • Decelerator: an AI incubator that aims to decelerate some forces while accelerating other axes of transformation
  • Future of Relationships: if AI threatens to hack our intimacy, how might we respond by upgrading our sense of lived connection with each other?
  • How It All Started: the story of going from a 2017 "compassion bot" demo to a post-LLM platform

 

TEAM

Among the crew of inspired volunteers behind Awakin AI are:

Preeta Bansal
Preeta Bansal

LightEn

Victor Koo
Victor Koo

Founder, YouKu

Manu Singh
Manu Singh

Co-Founder, Call Fire

Rick Archer
Rick Archer

Founder, BatGap

Eva Woo
Eva Woo

Tianren Culture

Tapan Parikh
Tapan Parikh

Cornell

Wakanyi Hoffman
Wakanyi Hoffman

Indigenous Scholar

Nipun Mehta
Nipun Mehta

ServiceSpace

Frequently Asked Questions



Thank you for co-creating!

We don't know the outcomes of our experiments but it seems critical that we try. Back in 1999, when we started ServiceSpace, we didn't feel like the Internet would magically repair the world's ills. But we leveraged it to "make it cool to give" and change ourselves along the way. Similarly, we are attempting to now tap AI to encourage community engagement, whose subtle corpus of heartful consciousness might elevate our collective threshold of wisdom -- and perhaps alleviate some suffering.

Shantideva's poetry in the 8th century still feels so apt:

“For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then, may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world.”