The Kind of AI We Actually Need | Van Jones  🔗 **Source:** [The Kind of AI We Actually Need | Van Jones](https://share.snipd.com/episode/e4b9f266-7b55-4678-ba57-be156216ea48) ## Highlights - **Adaptation Gap Between Exponential Tech and Linear Humanity** - Van Jones frames an adaptation gap where AI and other tech grow exponentially while human social adaptation follows a linear path. - He warns this mismatch risks mass unrest and questions whether our rapidly built future will remain human and civilized. Transcript: Van Jones We go now, we hear people talking about artificial intelligence. And it's unbelievable. It's powerful. And it's also a little scary to me. I worry about what we're doing. I worry about where we're going. I worry that we're in danger of building this brave new world with all this data and no wisdom. All this data, but no wisdom. Is there room for wisdom? Where is the wisdom going to come from in this brave new world? And so I want to talk about a different kind of AI. I want to talk about the AI that's absolutely necessary for us to give our children the future they deserve. I want to talk about ancient intelligence AI. I want to talk about ancestral intelligence AI. Do our ancestors have anything to teach us about entering new eras and creating new worlds? Or should we just push all the old folks on one side? I'm a ninth generation American, but I'm the first one in my family that was born with all my rights recognized by this government. Why? Why? Because my mother and my father did everything they could to make sure that I grew up in a better world. And I want to do that for my children, but I'm afraid. I don't know how to do that. I'm worried because a new human civilization is being born. And my children are going to grow up in it. ([Time 0:04:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cf9dfd34-4cd1-4601-b4ab-819c0dca74a6)) - **Accelerate Humanity Instead Of Slowing Innovation** - Van Jones argues we should accelerate human adaptation rather than try to slow technology with legislation that can't keep pace. - He urges building human capacity and wisdom because Congress and slow policy processes won't match exponential change. Transcript: Van Jones But I have bad news for you. I spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C. If you think that Congress can catch a train moving that fast and do something about it, you have never met a U.S. Senator. Okay? They're not exactly lickety-split type people. So I think the better move is to accelerate humanity. I think the better move is to accelerate humanity. And there's a way to do that, but it requires both sides of the tech divide to come back to ancient intelligence, ancestral intelligence. On the tech side, let me talk to my sisters and brothers in technology community and offer a prayer and an invitation. We're going to have to have a new deal between big tech and humanity. The original new deal was between government and the people. That's where the power was. The power was in government. The future used to be written in laws in Washington, D.C. Now the future is written in code in Silicon Valley. And so there has to be a new deal, a new agreement, a new social contract between big tech and human beings. But right now, we're not on path to doing that. Number one, our tech companies keep telling us things that ([Time 0:09:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/648cdec1-1b6e-4d18-a4a2-356945b91318)) - **Code Replaced Law As Future's Script** - Van Jones reframes power: the future used to be written in laws, now it's written in code in Silicon Valley, requiring a new social contract with tech. - He calls for a New Deal between big tech and humanity to distribute benefits and responsibilities. Transcript: Van Jones And so there has to be a new deal, a new agreement, a new social contract between big tech and human beings. But right now, we're not on path to doing that. Number one, our tech companies keep telling us things that we just don't believe. They keep saying, well, all this abundance, these robots are going to work overtime, everything's going to be fine. There's going to be so much abundance, everything's going to be fine. Nobody believes you. ([Time 0:10:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/83daab30-e09a-4d1a-9041-3edb2dd0aa1e)) - **Abundance Without Inclusion Feels Like Scarcity** - Jones explains abundance without inclusion feels like scarcity when benefits concentrate on one side and others are excluded. - He warns that dumping wealth or tech on only part of society creates humiliation and social danger, not shared prosperity. Transcript: Van Jones Abundance by itself doesn't solve your problems. By the way, the opposite. Just wheeling out a wheelbarrow into this room called AI full of diamonds and gold technically makes the room richer. But if I dump it out on this side of the room only, you're not richer. You're miserable. Abundance without participation, abundance without inclusion feels like scarcity. It feels like scarcity. You think you're scaling abundance, but we experience it as you scaling scarcity. ([Time 0:10:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/51310b8f-03f1-4d61-8849-40a79df35d6b)) - **Humiliation Is A Major Social Risk** - Jones highlights that mass humiliation from exclusion can be more destabilizing than unemployment alone. - He stresses social danger when people with nothing are publicly humiliated, citing prison work experience as evidence. Transcript: Van Jones They become the most dangerous person in that prison, even if they only weigh 100 pounds. We're not just risking mass unemployment. We're risking mass humiliation, and that has to be avoided. There's another reason that coming back to the people who embody ancestral intelligence at the grassroots level will be helpful. It's because it'd be helpful for you. You are in a very difficult situation if you're in the tech world. You have tremendous power. You have tremendous responsibilities. You're not just co-founding companies and co-founding firms. You're co-founding a new human civilization. ([Time 0:12:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5177f764-a97c-4392-b50c-8b322ac4ad51)) - **Tech Workers Should Reconnect With Ancestral Wisdom** - Van Jones invites tech workers to reconnect with ancestral institutions like churches, temples, and ceremonies to regain moral perspective. - He says these spaces can pull tech leaders out of greed-and-speed traps and improve decision making and heart. Transcript: Van Jones Ancient intelligence. Don't underestimate those mosques and temples and synagogues and churches and Native American ceremonies and prayer circles for you to come home and get your head on straight. Because you being in a greed and speed trap where you feel the only values that matter are greed and speed is not good for you. It's not good for your decision making. It's not good for your heart. Don't underestimate these little black churches that had nothing but praying hands and marching feet and changed a whole nation. Don't underestimate your grandma. Don't underestimate ancestral wisdom. We need you to come back, and you need us too. ([Time 0:13:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68a05f08-1463-4be4-a139-c988010e8f09)) - **Grassroots Should Call People In Not Cancel Them** - Van Jones asks grassroots activists to stop multiplying enemies and practice calling people in to build broader coalitions. - He reminds them that Dr. King was a futurist focused on dreams for tomorrow, so movements should multiply friends not enemies. Transcript: Van Jones And now on the other side, I do want to say something to my friends on the grassroots side. Yes, we want our tech folks to come back to ancestral intelligence, ancient intelligence, grassroots intelligence. But we've gotten a little bit away from that stuff, too. Those of us who work at the grassroots, whose hearts are with people who don't have very much, whose hearts are with people who have to choose between fewer pills or fewer meals this week, That's where our hearts are. Our hearts are with people whose main enemy isn't another rival tech firm. It's the check engine light. The check engine light. When that light comes on and you don't have enough money to go and get your car looked at, that's the enemy of the people that we care about. I get it. I get it. But I want to say something to my grassroots sisters and brothers. We've been a bit much. We've been a bit much this last 10 ([Time 0:14:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9f8acd70-b550-4133-bbad-3d8e91db94c6)) - **Examples Of Grassroots Tech Partnerships** - Van Jones lists real projects pairing grassroots leaders with engineers like Untappd Solutions and Noel Sudbury's expungement tools. - He cites John Hope Bryant's Hope AI and Reid Hoffman-backed Rapport as examples increasing AI literacy and EQ-focused AI. Transcript: Van Jones It would look like Andre Part, who was formerly incarcerated, paired up with engineers, built something called Untappd Solutions. They built a LinkedIn for formerly incarcerated people, getting people off the street and employed. Now they're deploying AI agents to help social workers. Noel Sudbury, the lawyer, teamed up with engineers using AI to expunge people's prison records. It would look like Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and Diana Fapir at Promise. They have built a billion-dollar company to help government not be more lethal, but more frugal and more helpful. It would look like Tadjiel Smith, my buddy at Rapport, a company backed by Reid Hoffman that I'm supporting that's using AI to increase EQ and not just IQ inside of firms. It would look like John Hope Bryant, who just launched Hope AI, to get thousands of grassroots people AI literate. He's going to get a billion people literate in AI in the next 10 years so we can create even more It would look like hope. It would look like hope. ([Time 0:17:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1f9cbb21-a3ab-47e3-af34-ae3eab99dcdc)) - **Less Greed And Shame Will Build Shared Hope** - Van Jones calls for less greed and speed from tech and less shame and blame from grassroots actors to create a hopeful movement. - He says combining those changes will produce ancestral intelligence for the next generation. Transcript: Van Jones On the tech side, a little less greed and speed, a little bit more sharing and caring. On the grassroots side, a little bit less shame and blame, a little bit more space and grace. ([Time 0:19:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b8f5e997-a75c-4c50-bebf-7dc5ed9ef2b5))