Making every person a polymath!
How I'm using AI to make learning a personalised experience.
For humanity, For consciousness.
Four days ago I was lying in bed, in a windowless motel on the outskirts of Shanghai. It was dark and I couldn’t tell the difference between night and day. I was in a phase of life where I realised, but wouldn’t admit that I felt empty. Not because I felt lonely or scared or depressed; none of these were the case, but because I didn’t know what my path in life would look like, not even the next step. That big scary feeling of not knowing caused me to fabricate interest in all kinds of industries and business ideas: EV company, gardening app, dating app, making humanity a subaquatic species (you can probably guess who I was trying to imitate). “Fake it till I make it,” I thought.
While all of these ideas intrigued me and got me excited, I didn’t love them enough to give my life to it. I knew that in the back of my mind, yet I decided to ignore it. I would rather walk a wrong path than no path at all.
Yet, when I was lying there, about to fall asleep, I asked myself, “What would be a company that is natural to me? And what would make the biggest impact on my fellow earthlings?”
That’s when an epiphany hit me like Zeus throwing a bolt of thunder right in my face.
“Education”!
I want to bring humanity and consciousness as a whole to its most fulfilled, divine state. I call it “humanity full”. I believe (but not dogmatically) that this is done by teaching every person everything about everything.
If you think about how you would define god, the universe, the all-knowing field, whatever you want to call it, a lot of different definitions might pop up or perhaps none at all, because maybe you don’t believe in god. Either way, one way of looking at it is by defining god as that which stands in contact with, and is knowledgeable of, every atom and piece of information throughout the universe. That ultimate state of consciousness might just be the natural resting place for our own consciousness.
Wow, that sounds like a lot! How do we do it?
I don’t have specific answers yet, but since the universe is all information which some (including myself) call god, we as humans should strive to attain universal knowledge and truly understand the universe.
This company (I don’t have a name yet) is meant to get humanity there, by incentivizing every person to learn everything about everything. This company is meant to bring us into the second renaissance. This time not just led by a dozen frontrunners but by 8 billion polymaths.
Da Vinci must be the norm.
This pansophic ideal (universal wisdom accessible to all) seemed an unachievable dream for hundreds and thousands of years. Yet I think it is possible now, through AI-powered education.
AI allows us to create a fully adaptive, fun, efficient and natural learning experience catered to the individual.
Imagine being able to learn how to paint by not only having Bob Ross guide you, but also have him give real-time feedback, ask you questions about your thinking and spark your curiosity by connecting your art to other fields of your life.
Imagine rediscovering the theory of relativity all on your own from scratch or even discovering new laws of physics just because you had the right mentor asking the right questions.
Imagine designing your own clothing line on Wednesday, building hobbit houses on Friday and discovering a new species of mushrooms while exploring a forest on Sunday.
Imagine…
The ultimate goal of universal knowledge will most likely require a more symbiotic relationship between AI and humanity. Yet as of now the focus is to let people learn everything about anything in a way that fits them.
“Pansophia is the universal knowledge of all things, by which all men may be brought to the highest happiness.”
~John Amos Comenius (1668)
Although I’m obsessed with learning new skills and gaining knowledge (it’s what keeps me up at night), I’ve always been at war with school. So much so that I had to mentally divorce “learning” from “school” just to survive with my curiosity intact. I was nearly kicked out three times, and the principal’s office became my second home. All because thinking outside the lines wasn’t allowed.
Once, for a tiny school business project, I introduced a commission-based pay structure to motivate my classmates to actually sell our damn product. The school called it fraud and sentenced me to 40 hours of “voluntary” work. Another time, my art teacher handed out a sheet with a literal box drawn on it and the words “think outside the box.” So I did. I scribbled wild spirals across the entire page, the table, even the back. She lost it. Straight to the principal.
That day something snapped. I was so furious that I sat down and wrote a whole manifesto on tearing the education system down and rebuilding it from the ground up. I called it START (School Transformation And Restructuring Thesis; yeah, I tried my best). 80 pages from a pissed-off but inspired 16-year-old who wanted to learn on his own terms.
I’ve always known I wanted to make a dent in the universe, but nothing ever felt natural. I chased every shiny idea (EVs, underwater colonies…), trying to force a mission. None fit. Then, four nights ago, in that windowless motel room on the edge of Shanghai, it hit me like Zeus’s thunderbolt all over again.
Learning is the obsession of my life, and the struggle of my life.
What better place to start a company?
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how
to remain an artist once we grow up.”~Pablo Picasso (1966)
“I will win all 6 Nobel prizes”
~ 6 y/o Finn Jennen (2013)
