KI-LIFE² Project - Metacrisis Grant Proposal

Project Name: KI-LIFE²

Name of Project:

KI-LIFE² - the Knowing Intelligence - Learning Interactively For Everybody and Enlivenment.

Proposal in one sentence:

Creation of a Learning Assistant Multi-Agent Framework using AI / ML / DS for enhancing personal and collective cognition toward future² “Knowing societies” and enlivening the planet.

Description of the project and what problem it is solving:

Our societies are presently facing a severe systemic metacrisis (climate change, energy peak, ecological and biological collapse, meaning crisis and attentional crash) jeopardizing the survival of all living beings on our planet, including ourselves (Schmachtenberger, Vervaeke).

The only way to move forward with enough speed and to exceed these perils is to mobilize the great power of cognitive technologies, like AI / ML / DS, to augment (Engelbart) and extend personal intelligence and collective insight. The aim being to help catalyzing an epistemic rational shift toward a more worthy and commons (Bauwens) future² for all livings, toward a new stage of our human civilization by enhancing our NGI (Natural General Intelligence).

I have a biology and neurosciences background and a passion for cognitive sciences (CS) & technologies for thirty years, and more particularly inside the encompassing and embodied modeling framework of CS called the enactive paradigm (Varela, Thompson & Rosch). Enaction put the emphasis on lived experience and also on body and participatory sense-making (Di Paolo & De Jaegher) in the cognitive process. I also have a deep personal experience in using scholar knowledge and cognitives technologies to design and transform my own thinking and sense-making, leading me to a meta-paradigmatic and creative conception called “Scybernethic(s)” (https://scybernethics.org) envisioned as an example of a “second-order rationality” (referring to the second-order cybernetics). This is how I have worked on myself to enact this know-how (more than a know-what):

** in the part 3 about computer simulations of a-cognition / AI, “PDP” stand for Parallel and Distributed Processing, the original conception behind the Back-Propagation algorithm (Rumelhart), later called “Deep Learning” by Google marketing. I have also studied and designed Swarms, networks of Finite-States Automata (Wolfram) and Multi-Agents Systems.

Some key elements of “second-order thinking” and design:

• The coupling of 1st (phenomenological), 2d (dialogical) and 3d (objective, scientific) person approaches.
• Thinking in term of levels of abstractions and metastability.
• Mixing Top-down (functional), Bottom-up (emergent) and Evolutionary models approaches (Design and Knowledge representation).
• (Negative) Feedback analysis all the way up and down (Circular design).
• Dynamical iterative design and Predictive / corrective time management (in relation with Active inference).
• Working analytically with conceptual dipoles seen at the same time as distinct and complementary (post-meta-dualist knowledge representation).
• Embodied homeostatic synthesis enacted patiently (”autopoietic” synthesis, bio-logic).
• Acting functionally as “parallel and distributed processing” (iterative processing) beings toward real deep learning and “relevant realizations” (Vervaeke).
• Hermeneutical and iterative (self)design cycles with cognitive technologies (AI / ML / DS).