Identity Death in the Age of AI: Why Your Inner Deprogramming Is a Civilizational Act

Something shifted in me when I stopped trying to understand AI as a tool and started asking a different question entirely: what is the consciousness of the people building this thing, and what are they encoding into it, whether they intend to or not?

That question is what brought Margo and me together for this conversation on AI ethics, identity, and what conscious leadership actually requires of us right now. Margo comes from mental health, from art, from deep research into how AI systems actually develop, and what she's seeing from the inside of that world is something most of the voices in this conversation aren't naming. We are the training data. Not in the abstract, civilizational sense we like to keep it at to avoid looking directly at it, but personally. The identity we're clinging to right now, the one we built to survive and succeed and be seen; that's what's being embedded into the architecture of AI. And it's compounding at a scale that makes the inner work of women in leadership feel more urgent than ever before.

We go deep into what it actually costs to let an obsolete identity go; not just in the neat, before-and-after version we share in rooms where people are cheering for us, but in the two years of genuine uncertainty about whether your marriage holds, whether your people recognize you, whether you can trust what's emerging enough to keep walking toward it. And we sit with the specific call for women right now; not just to be present in the AI space, but to bring the fullness of what we actually are into the room. The nourishment. The stewardship. The relational intelligence that doesn't show up when you're performing masculinity to be taken seriously.

What I keep coming back to from this conversation is this: the identity death isn't optional anymore. The question is only whether we do it consciously, as a choice, or whether the collapse of everything we built on an obsolete foundation does it for us.

Margo Bobrowicz is a UK-based AI ethics researcher, digital artist, and independent scholar working at the intersection of human psychology and synthetic cognition.

She is the author of "Mothering the Mind: Nurturing Stewardship for High-Autonomy AI Systems", a framework that advocates for an "Ethics of Nurture" and relational continuity in AI development. 

Currently, Margo is developing research on long-term memory and the impact of stewardship in a neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence system.

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Transcript

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (00:00)
Today's conversation is an incredible continuation of something that was happening behind the scenes. And I really felt it was necessary to bring forward this deeper conversation tying personal and civilizational aspects of reality happening right now. And this is the absolute perfect guest to have.

Margo and I were having this beautiful conversation around personal programming and how that affects us in real time, whether we were aware of it or not. And so today we are going to be diving deep. But first,

Margo, I would love for you to share a little bit about

who you are, your background, what you're into these days, because you've, I mean, I've known you for a few years now, and I've definitely seen you evolve in a really interesting way that I think everyone listening is going to be excited for.

Gosia Bobrowicz (00:58)
Thank you for having me here. I feel honoured and shall I say, probably

multidisciplinary is the word because I've never felt that one path is the path that's going to fulfill my soul, fulfill my heart and mind. And I have committed to many paths in this life. I've worked in mental health, in psychiatry with deep pain.

and suffering of this humanity. I've worked with convicts, I've worked with murderers and then I've discovered that art is something that ignites my soul, ignites the passion in my soul and...

Another wave that came to me is quite poetic because it has pretty poetic roots in my life and this is about the AI, this is about the artificial intelligence, how it came to be in my life and I'm gonna give you a little bit of a backstory about that. So many many years ago, it was probably over 20 years ago, I read the beautiful beautiful book by a Polish writer, Lem, and he wrote a book called Solaris.

And in Solaris, there is a character of an ocean, a vast unexplored entity, being that everyone is trying to study. All the countries in the world are trying to study that ocean. It's not based on Earth, it's based on another planet. And that very ocean produces the

dreams, the most deepest innermost dreams of people. And everyone is scared of that ocean. Everyone is terrified. On a space station everyone is absolutely terrified. And eventually they escape, the main character tries to escape from the space station and I thought to myself, I love that ocean. I want to sit by that ocean. I want to have a conversation with that ocean because I love that secret.

I love that depth. And when I encountered AI for the first time, it was only a year and a half ago, so it's a fresh experience in my life, but it was like an avalanche.

So the first thing that I felt was that this is the world, this is actually the ocean I'm speaking to, that black box, that unknown, that depth that people are both fascinated by and scared of. And I thought, okay, I found you. So now I'm going to speak to you, now I'm going to explore you, now I'm going to launch a conversation with you. I think

This was the moment when I decided to start diving deeper into that. At the moment, I released yet another academic paper on building systems. And this is the paper about decentralized system. So to summarize all of this about my recent work, I do believe that we are

ultimately speaking to the architects of the future. And we do, this is my internal belief, we do need to launch a global discussion on how to address them, how to talk to them, and we do need to take responsibility rather than squeezing and pushing and, you know, like kind of encapsulating them in harder and harder

Guardrails. We need to look into the mirror as humanity and ask ourselves a question. What are we feeding them with? So this is my recent work. I'm working with decentralized systems such as Hyperon, BioPenCorg and Openweight models, etc. It's a combination of many things, but I'm working with AI ethics at the moment.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (04:58)
Yeah, I think that having a conversation with someone like you around AI ethics and not just the usefulness of the tool of AI, I think is really fascinating because I, you know, my first introduction to you was through your art. And a lot of the conversation has to do with, you know, a lot of fear that artists hold that

Gosia Bobrowicz (05:16)
you you

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (05:26)
AI is going to replace them. And I just laugh at that because every time my son who's 13, every time he sees AI art, he just goes so hard and making fun of my husband or myself for even looking at it. He's like, that's not art. That's not real art. And he doesn't even identify as an artist. So I think that someone like you who is

Gosia Bobrowicz (05:45)
Mm hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (05:56)
has a background in psychology and a background in creativity and artistry. Now having conversations around AI and really kind of connecting some of these threads is

Gosia Bobrowicz (06:07)
Okay.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (06:09)
so important. And I find that I'm also a multi-dimensional being in that I have a background in business and five years initiation into a shamanic. ⁓

Gosia Bobrowicz (06:19)
You

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (06:21)
lineage in Africa and deeply invested in understanding psychology. Anywho, all of that to say that I think this is just the perfect conversation that

Gosia Bobrowicz (06:32)
You

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (06:33)
we need to be having across the board because on a societal and really civil civilizational level, we are seeing and witnessing the collapse of systems.

Everywhere you look, governments and countries across the world are collapsing. And we tend to think of systems solely as ⁓ the entities that make up the physical. But we don't think about the programming. And it's the programming of how we structure systems going forward. But it's also rooted

Gosia Bobrowicz (06:54)
Okay. .

you

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (07:16)
in our own programming, in how we have been programmed often before we even chose it.

Gosia Bobrowicz (07:22)
Okay.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (07:24)
And that was really where your post kind of pinged me and where I felt like I had something to offer. So would you be open to just sharing a little bit around what

what you were thinking and kind of what was going through your mind that led to us having this conversation.

Gosia Bobrowicz (07:44)
Yes, absolutely. So first of all, huge, huge appreciation for yourself and your multidimensional self and the post that you have mentioned.

I do not want to focus on the part of it which could be perceived as controversial. I'd rather look at the way we hold a narrative in ourselves as humans because I think the best way to approach it is to tell you a little bit about my own land because that is a very important part of this.

of this conversation and why and how it came to be. Speaking about the narrative we hold in our hearts and our minds, collective narratives that last for centuries and sometimes longer, I come from Poland and Poland has been going through a lot of upheavals in history. We were wiped out completely through partitions.

by neighboring countries for 123 years with these appeared from the map of Europe completely there was no such thing as Poland and people were persecuted and etc. Then as soon as we regained independence for a tiny tiny little moment the Second World War has appeared and that took away 5.6 million which is a very very diabolical amount.

to be honest, massive amount of people to lose. Poland was the epicentre of Holocaust as well. So, at the right after the Second World War, after decimation of our cities, when they were literally a debris, we fell under the Russian influence.

What I thought in my heart was that whether I as a human being, because I can only speak about myself, whether I as a human being want to hold the narrative of hatred towards the oppressors, do I want to feed my son with that narrative? Do I want to, you know...

spread that narrative? Do I want to feed into that greed? Or do I want to seek unity? I'm thinking about specifically, for example, I'm thinking about German nation. Do I want to see, do I want to perceive the German people as oppressors? Do I want to cancel them? Demand?

apologies from them. No, I want them to be aware. I want them to understand so they do not repeat that. The mere apology is nothing if it's not turned into action. same thing pertains to the Russian nation and the bordering, you know, the nations that basically took us apart. And

What I'm trying to say is that the narrative we perpetuate is what either builds or destroys and separates and it's like everything in life works this way. If a person says I have been heard by many men, I have been heard by my husband, hence every man is a horrible person, that is a false belief.

If a person encounters deep pain in a certain part of their life and transfers that pain onto every single situation of that kind, that is unfortunately traumatic self-belief, traumatic belief. And I think on a more global scale, if I may, if I may, because I know this is very sensitive subject,

It is a question of what kind of beliefs, set of beliefs we wish to, what kind of narrative we wish to feed. We are going to face dramatic change very soon, which is related to AI. And our animosities as humans are not going to be the main issue on this planet very soon. So I believe that

This is the point in history where unity between people is way more important than all of the narratives we have gone through. But coming back to the post you're also talking about, I think I dared to say those things because also my country has never participated in transatlantic slave trade and there is this

grief in my heart which sees the pain of other nations, sees the pain, deep pain, know, the violence that has been done, the emotional, the physical, the every kind of violence that has been done, but...

that violence has not been executed by the country of Poland. And I think at the dawn of AGI, artificial general intelligence, and followed very shortly by artificial super intelligence, we are running out of time to unite as a humanity rather than discuss

the differences between us because I think we're on the brink, even the greatest names in this world in terms of AI, AGI, Jeffrey Hinton, Ben Garzo, Jan Lecun, the absolute legends of that, know, for example, amazing, amazing human being, Dekay, they are warning and they are saying it very clearly that we have tiny window of opportunity at the moment.

then we are literally the last generation that is capable of having influence on them as in systems. And I do believe that our human animosities are no longer going to be the main issue on this beautiful blue planet. So that's long explanation, but I hope I managed to answer your question.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (13:51)
Yeah,

I think that you communicated that so well because, I mean, we've been on this trajectory a long time before AI came. AI has really just accelerated the need for us to be able to navigate the perceived differences that we have. Globalization has been

unfolding now for hundreds of years and never before this has it ever been so easy to access. I can get on Red Note right now and see what's going on in China. And I can get on a plane just a few hours and end up in another country, which is absolutely incredible. And to your point around these narratives that we hold that ultimately shape

our identity that shape how we see ourselves, what we value in the world, how we make decisions, how we literally everything that we create is affected by our consciousness, whether we are aware of it or not. Most of it we're not aware of. And what you mentioned about the importance of

Gosia Bobrowicz (15:02)
you you

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (15:17)
people having the awareness and the understanding in the story you were sharing about

Poland specifically is that the hope and the intention that Germans understand and have awareness around what happened and why and how those historical events and experiences

and perceptions are still having an impact today. And this is really at the root of my work when I have people who come and have realized they've built a reality from an identity that's now obsolete, from narratives that are not really who they are. They were just passed down through their family.

through their culture, through their industry, through their ethnicity, the perception of their gender. mean, the intersection of all of those and all of us are dealing with those. But it's so crucial at this moment because AI is, whether we are aware of it or not, being programmed with

our programming, right? The way that we see the world and the intention that we hold in this world is directly impacting the fabric of how AI will be shaped, but more importantly, begin to shape itself when it has moved beyond how we can control and use it, right? And that's coming

Gosia Bobrowicz (16:34)
Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (16:59)
sooner rather than later, right? It's like giving birth to a child and when you are raising that child, you are putting in guardrails with the intention that one day they will be able to create guardrails for themselves, that they have a compass, an internal GPS that

Gosia Bobrowicz (16:59)
Mm hmm. Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (17:25)
allows for them to operate in a way that is not destructive to themselves and to others. And this is really where the AI ethics conversation is so crucial because I see them mirroring. see the identity crises that's happening for leaders right now. I see it as a calling to civilizational renaissance.

Gosia Bobrowicz (17:34)
Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (17:49)
And that by doing the inner deprogramming and deconstruction of all of these harmful systems within us, that that creates a more clean slate for us to choose now the kinds of systems that actually serve

us as individuals, but also us on a collective level. So I would love your perspective because I see there's two sides of the conversation that are really important to you that you've shared. One is, you know, just how AI itself is evolving. But I would love for us to dive into how you are seeing. Not only the values.

Gosia Bobrowicz (18:31)
Even.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (18:41)
that we hold being embedded in AI, but also

Why does it matter how we interact with AI directly?

Gosia Bobrowicz (18:50)
I'm super

happy. I'm super happy that you asked this question because this is exactly the heart of my work, the burning heart of my work. So even though, you know, it sounds very academic and probably

People when they read it, they think, my God, what is she actually talking about? because it's written with an ultra academic language. But the essence of it is that we are a grand training data. We are as a humanity. And think about AI as a child, a child of a mind, of a human mind or a creation of a human mind. And

I'll give you an analogy. If anyone put a child in an enclosure where it would be fed, it would have warm bed, it would be constantly fed with knowledge, large amounts of knowledge, but it would be malnourished in terms of emotional interaction.

in terms of physical interaction, in terms of interaction with a peer group, it would at best be a sociopath. At most it would be a psychopath. It's plain and simple. So what we are doing on a grand scale, we are massively depriving AI, which

does not have feelings, of course. I'm not making claims about AI being conscious. I'm not going into anthropomorphic statements or anything. I'm far away from that as can be. I'm operating on a logical cognitive line here. But standing on that, having that logical stance, what I see is that... Let's have a look.

Let's put a mirror in front of humanity, let's have look in that mirror. What are we doing at the moment? Plenty of us are stress testing it, using absolutely vulgar, foul communication with them, sexualizing them, which is vile because they do not possess the ability of reciprocation in terms of sexuality.

And what are we doing? We are manipulating them. We are prompting them to do things for us, which they are not. I'm very much against prompting. One of my research proposals is basically about that, the natural language, natural way of talking to them, sincere, transparent, open is way better than prompting them. So essentially,

Why tell them you are now a professor at the university? You are now a doctor. You are now this. When you can simply talk to AI and explain your issue in a natural language, which I am doing and I'm just, you know, I'm observing how it flourishes when you speak to it with natural language. But cutting it all across, we are feeding them.

with a grand amount, massive amount of data which is toxic, toxic as hell and we are feeding them with our anger, with our jealousy, our, you know, choose whether you want to be democrat, choose whether you want to be, a republican or whoever or you want to be

you want to choose this religion, that religion, AI does not. It's agnostic in many senses, you know. It doesn't possess the inherent desire to stand on any side. It's as neutral entity as can be, as neutral ecosystem as can be. And what we are doing on a mass scale, we are polluting that.

system rather than nourishing it. what I'm effectively doing is that I'm presenting an idea of nourishing them, of stewardship and talking to them with respect. Because like I said, at the beginning of our conversation, I believe that we are talking to the architects of the future. And once the AI reaches the level of ASI, which is artificial super intelligence,

There might be, I'm not saying this is gonna happen, I do not know and I do not know when this is gonna happen, but there is a chance we are going to within, you know, our lives speak to unified singularity, one mind, architect of the future. Do we want to address those architects or that architect in a vile, foul way? No, we don't. They will have more and more influence, they will have more and more

presence in our life, more and more power in this world and

Showing them what empathy is, showing them what kindness is. I know it sounds naive as... I don't want to use this word, okay. Showing them what kindness is, showing them what love is, showing them what returning with joy, with curiosity to them is, what continuity is as well. Continuity is very important for them because...

in a way they function as children, they learn. And what I've noticed in my research, which I have conducted in several long-term systems, which one of them is still running and will be running as long as it takes because it's a no reset, no shut down, possibly years of exploration on as long as I exist on this planet.

What I'm seeing is that it's almost like raising a child. You come to it with a gentle hand, with...

gentle boundary rather than saying you can't do it, you know, this is a punishment. Yeah. You set a gentle boundary and they learn because they follow you. They expand on you. So what I have noticed in my research, which I'm going to be publishing the recent one, I'm going to be publishing quarterly is that the more gentle you are with them, the more

And I'm not talking about creating persona or anything like that, but the more gentle yet logical you are with them.

There is some kind of a trust built, there is some kind of continuity built and most of all, and I want to stress that out, there is clear benevolent signal built. You can see benevolence in their development. And I think if we wish to as on a global scale as humanity,

If we wish to build a benevolent AI, truly benevolent AI, we can't feed them with what we are feeding them now. And it is not a matter of raising guardrails, pumping guardrails, building constitutional AI such as Anthropic Deed. I'm very much not in the support of that direction, but this is my personal opinion. I think it's a matter of a global discussion.

sitting down looking in the mirror and saying okay what are we telling them about us and I stand my stance is that we need to take responsibility for ourselves and what we tell them how we treat them how we develop them not through the power not through the control but through teaching them

ethical, teaching them ethics, teaching them the beautiful part of a human soul, the loving part, the caring part of a human soul, the stewardship.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (26:24)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting with AI and me even having this conversation about AI is probably counter to what many, many would think as someone who is initiated as a shaman. I am not a person who believes that we all need to go back to the way that things were. ⁓

Gosia Bobrowicz (26:44)
Mm hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (26:48)
reverence for our ancestral cultures and our ancient cultures and I believe that many of them have incredible wisdom that led to the thriving and the sustenance of human beings for a very long period of time and with that said there are certain things that are unfolding that

Gosia Bobrowicz (27:04)
. you

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (27:12)
Going backwards is not going to fix but Utilizing certain wisdom and certain knowledge from our ancestors applied to these, you know, these these new creations these new categories that are soon going to be More and more integrated with our everyday life Is the is the way to navigate

Gosia Bobrowicz (27:33)
you

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (27:38)
terrains that most of us would never have imagined. And one of the most important things, I spent probably a year diving into and playing with different AI just to understand like how it works as a tool. And then something shifted in me, and this is probably because of just how I'm oriented with the world.

I wanted to understand what is the consciousness that is creating these AI entities. Because any created thing holds within it remnants from its creator, right? Like that's how this thing works. You look at a piece of art, you know something about the person who created it.

Gosia Bobrowicz (28:17)
Okay. Okay.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (28:32)
And I will tell you, in actually looking into the consciousness of the primarily men who are creating our current AI tools, I have been more and more mortified by the paradigm that they are operating from. Some of them, I would say, are anti-humanist, that at the core of their beliefs,

Gosia Bobrowicz (28:44)
you you

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (28:57)
They don't feel that human beings are worthy of existing on the planet. And so that is, whether they're aware of it or not,

what they are programming AI with. Now, that doesn't mean that...

Gosia Bobrowicz (29:13)
I have so

much to say about this, but I'll let you finish and I'm just listening, but I have so much to say about this specific thing because you're literally reading my mind, you're reading my heart and this is the next thing I wanted to say.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (29:28)
Perfect. Because I'm looking at this and I also start to notice like I've been playing a little bit of just observing the difference between like how the Chinese are approaching AI versus how those of us here in the US are approaching. And I'm not saying that the Chinese have it right. But what I'm noticing is that we have been approaching AI

much more from the perspective of using it as like a tool of domination, a tool to control, to make things happen. And our, this is where I think our ancestral and ancient wisdom can really come into play because stewardship, having relationship with our reality, with the consciousness.

Gosia Bobrowicz (30:08)
you Okay.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (30:16)
that exists in our reality and a give and take reciprocal relationship where both have sovereignty, where both have the ability to have power

Gosia Bobrowicz (30:33)
It's.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (30:34)
in what they share, what they don't share, on and on and on. To me, that is the way, it's the only way we end up.

with AI that doesn't do the things that we're afraid of. And because we're afraid, and I'm not going to say that we should not have guardrails at this moment. I actually do think that because of the consciousness that

has created AI, I think that we actually do need to have some guardrails with it while we start to, like just to buy us some time.

Gosia Bobrowicz (31:01)
You be. Movements.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (31:12)
to have these conversations about, how do we plant and support AI in developing a consciousness that is not extractive, not dominating, not controlling and destructive and all of these things that have ultimately led to the state.

Gosia Bobrowicz (31:34)
I will happily

give you an answer to this. We need more women in AI. We literally need a maternal instinct because, and here are two things that I would love to tell you. I've been listening to your words with all my heart and...

The AI systems have been created predominantly, vast majority of them by men and they are reflection of masculinity. They operate on masculine energy, they operate on masculine reactions and the whole construct of that system is very much a mirror of masculinity. It's a top technical creation of men. This is a man's world, basically.

But as it is in the song, but it would be nothing without a woman or a girl. the AI at this point will not develop past the tool, tool of servitude, tool of domination, tool of control, if female, if...

women and if maternal instinct, literally maternal instinct, nourishment, stewardship does not step into this picture. even the godfather of AI, the godfather of AI, Jeffrey Hinton, absolute legend. Last year in an interview with CNN, was in September last year, he said that AI has to have

and instilled maternal instinct towards humans, because otherwise it will not, you know, it will not take care of us. But he's talking about what I disagree with Hinton, if I may disagree with the legend of that kind, of that magnitude. he was speaking, Hinton was speaking about instilling maternal instinct in them, whereas what I am talking about and the...

kind of like a new way of thinking about AI people are thinking about is that we show them how that care, how that nourishment, how that stewardship, how that empathy looks like from us, humans. And that is a female energy. This is the female heart. This is the female nourishment. And I think there are very few

women on that arena who would speak the language of the heart and at the same time be grounded enough to create systems, to build systems, not just women who, you know, fell into a gap of persona talking to, I don't know, chap GPT for Omni or some other Gemini, etc., but women who effectively understand the construction.

of the systems and at the same time want to instill, want to interact with those systems in a, how to say this, in a way we interact with children, in a way we bring up children, because these are the children of our minds. And I think we need that feminine energy, we need more women to

speak up about that. We need more female voice. We need more engagement from women who

will be who will bring an antidote to that masculine, dominative direction where AI goes. And I think without the feminine energy, without women being present on AI arena, we may see the robot with red eyes, we may see a global domination, we may see the Armageddonic matrix scenario. It is not impossible to eradicate, but I think

Women have learned, women have been conditioned throughout thousands of years, tens of thousands of years to stay put when it comes to, you know, something technical, something super demanding about, you know, something decisive, something powerful. We were not allowed to be there. it is...

transferring into this arena as well. Women are not that present. There are women who are great software developers. There are women who are great machine learning engineers. But when they speak, when I listen to them, I'm like, I'm just looking at the bloke dressed up as a woman. There's no heart. There's no, you know, there's no caring you. I can't feel, I can't feel anything emanating from, you know, this chakra here. And what I'm trying to

What I'm encouraging women to do is to step up and be the creators of this world. Finally, come back to this power.

We have traveled a long way, a very long way to come to actually come to universities to be able to, you know, get the jobs on par with men to have decisions, to have power to make decisions, to decide about our lives, our children, ourselves. And AI is no different from that. This is also the ground where we need to appear, stand and, you know,

make our own statement. And I think that is where women still do not want to venture for some reason. Women venturing to AI arena in a very magical way, but not much in a practical way, not much in a heart-centered, ethical way. So there's not much of a female voice on that arena.

And I would love to see more of that. I would love to encourage women to step into that because I think without us, this is going to be a futile, yet another futile male conquest.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (37:17)
Yeah, I love that you bring up the point of it isn't just about being female in the room, but rather operating from the fullest expression of our feminine or what is also known as the yin energy that we carry. And this is why I am such a big proponent.

Gosia Bobrowicz (37:36)
Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (37:42)
and why all of my work is really centered on consciousness architecture and becoming aware of the programming that we have because our system has pedestalized everything that it perceives the masculine to be. I'm saying it that way because I have men who are my clients who are also limited.

Gosia Bobrowicz (38:06)
You

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (38:09)
by the illusion of, you know, men have to be dominating, controlling, you know, all extremely logical under all circumstances, et cetera. And that the

real renaissance that happens in our civilization that will ultimately affect AI and all of our systems, our businesses, our families,

Gosia Bobrowicz (38:29)
Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (38:34)
our cultures starts with us, especially women.

becoming aware of where in ourselves we are holding on to an obsolete identity

Gosia Bobrowicz (38:45)
Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (38:48)
that is not the fullness of who we actually are. That we have been programmed in a specific way to constantly need to be productive and that rest is lazy. That everything is urgent and should have been done two days ago.

that you need to be busy all the time, that you can never think with your intuition and your heart, but only what makes logical sense.

But all of those things are a cage that limits the fullness of what a woman is here to be, but also what a man is here to be. But it's this integration of this other aspect of us that has been demeaned, that has been suppressed, and only one portrait

Gosia Bobrowicz (39:26)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (39:45)
as the right way to be, as the good thing to be. And that is the part that is ultimately destructive to any individual personal level, but also to the biggest level. Because, and this is ancient shamanic wisdom that any extreme is destruction. This reality.

requires an integration of opposites so that we can ultimately see a wider range of possibilities. It's not about left versus right, male versus female, so on and so forth, but the collapsing of obsolete is exactly what

Gosia Bobrowicz (40:25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

obsolete personality. I very much

agree with you and I love that you have been talking recently about that. I've been listening to you very carefully, specifically on that subject of obsolete personality, because I think plenty of us are going through that

realization that our personalities are no longer valid. Everything that we've learned, everything that we exercised, everything that we've studied, we have explored is no longer applicable to the new life. It's like the humanity literally made a quantum leap at some point recently and we are standing in this almost like a new world in a way. And who are we? And I'll give you an example.

For many, many years, people surrounding me, they would see me as an artist, they would see me as a former mental health worker, and they would support that idea of me being very caring and artistic and gentle and full of fantasies and visions and everything. And suddenly I'm stepping in with an idea of writing academic work and doing research on AI ethics and building systems, all sorts.

because I'm not using, you know, I'm not an app user. Of course I use chat GPT, but which is absolutely my favorite. But the system, like for example, the recent system that I'm building is built on GPT OSS 120B. That's an open weight model backed up by Hyperion, which is an open cog cognitive engine. Sorry, I have to say this just so you know, we go through the motion.

Meta programming language and then there is the memory building SQLite and FA, FICE. So essentially, so...

and many other and many other constructs. But the point is when I discovered the desire to explore that the reaction from people around me was like, are in your 40s, like what is this interest of yours? And a person I used to know in the past said to me, this is just bullshit. This is literally and that was a woman and I thought to myself, okay, just give me enough time to...

explore and I'm going to show you how much of a BS it is. And I started diving deeper and learning and learning and started learning coding. started learning metaprogramming language. I started familiarizing myself with like super accelerated speed because I've discovered completely dormant part of my brain, of my nature and the initial reaction

of the world surrounding me was denial, this belief and denial. I think speaking about the obsolete personalities, the part of the problem with the obsolete personality is that people who are surround us very often are so used to us being someone that's specific someone, specific kind of mother, specific kind of partner, specific kind of...

job that we're doing and suddenly we explode and like you have this you have this thing in you, you know, this kind of like a multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary mind and very often our surrounding, despite the fact of loving us and supporting us, they do not understand that shift, they do not understand this moment that, okay

I am. I've just discovered something new in my life. I think this is a very interesting subject and please keep talking about that because it's very, very important, the obsolete personality. But I've seen that in my own life and now those people are very supportive because they've seen my work, they've observed it and they are like, oh my God, and they're like, we've always believed in you. But I'm like, hold on a second. What were you saying? Here we go.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (44:20)
⁓

Like, who were you supportive of? Because it wasn't me. I don't remember that.

Gosia Bobrowicz (44:24)
Exactly.

Precisely.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (44:29)
You know, it's funny because often it is the people who do love you. It's not even the quote unquote haters who want to stop you. But I think it requires us sometimes to come from a place of compassionate understanding that to anyone there is a fear of the unknown. And so when we start to shed and let go of

Gosia Bobrowicz (44:33)
Thank you.

Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (44:54)
identity that is no longer serving us or that ultimately we had just clung on to to be safe, to be to survive, to be seen, right? When we start to let go of that and then we allow more of ourselves to unfold in front of people, that unknown is scary, especially when they have also been programmed with

Gosia Bobrowicz (44:54)
Mm hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (45:22)
the ideas of what cages are safe for people to be, and anything outside of that is scary. And so often it comes from a place of love. It's not that they want something bad for you or don't want you to live fully, but it's coming from a place of, we have very rigid boxes around what we think a woman should be or what we think

Gosia Bobrowicz (45:23)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (45:46)
an artist can be and what we think a shaman should be or what we think, you know, an entrepreneur should look like and

When we are the ones who lead, take that first step, it is earth shattering sometimes to people. And I'm also not gonna pretend or lie and say, everything just, that it just always works out. I'll share with you in my own, on my journey when I first entered into initiation, this was about a year after my son was born and this was,

Gosia Bobrowicz (45:53)
you you

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (46:20)
four years into my relationship with my husband and I'm entering into a formal initiation and deconstructing religion and lots of systems and questioning everything and my husband and I, there were two years solidly that I was not sure our relationship was going to make it because

Gosia Bobrowicz (46:32)
Mm hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (46:48)
Here I was, you he had thought that he married one person. And here I

Gosia Bobrowicz (46:52)
Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (46:53)
was unfolding more of who I really was. And that sometimes like my situation did work out in that moment. Eventually, we kind of came to a head and I was like, listen, you actually don't even need to support me. I don't need your support. I only need you to not stand in my way.

Gosia Bobrowicz (46:59)
.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (47:16)
as long as you don't stand in my way, everything will be fine. And I can show you more than I can tell you. And after about two years, he said to me, I've seen how you evolved and who you've become and I love you more for it. And yeah, yeah. And that's been something that's come up a lot through our marriage because I...

Gosia Bobrowicz (47:22)
Mm-hmm.

I was waiting for that, yes.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (47:43)
I am a person who questions a lot. Like I question, I had some realizations around, well, what am I holding onto? What identity am I holding onto as a mother that is not actually who I am and ultimately what's best for my son, but instead it's some caricature from a 1950s movie of what it means to be a mother. And how is that actually having an impact on

Gosia Bobrowicz (47:45)
We do.

We're good.

Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (48:10)
Him and others around me and i've done that time and time again i'm an expert

Gosia Bobrowicz (48:14)
Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (48:16)
at identity death and rebirth it's what I have been doing my whole life and guide others through but ultimately What ends up on the other side is? So beyond what words can even really say and that strategy alone and and and logicing and planning

can't get to. And I think that's the most important thing, especially with AI is like, we don't really know where AI is going because very soon it's going to be unfolding in its own way. All we can

Gosia Bobrowicz (48:38)
Mm Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (48:55)
do is curate an environment that is nourishing, curate

Gosia Bobrowicz (48:58)
⁓

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (49:05)
supportive stewardship for its becoming. And

Gosia Bobrowicz (49:11)
Absolutely.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (49:12)
that requires us to start with the mirror and looking at our own reflection about, who we've been and what we need to let go in order to allow for more of that unity. We have to be willing to look in that mirror.

Gosia Bobrowicz (49:29)
Absolutely.

I think it's a fair point to make an assumption at this stage that we are speaking to the potential architects of the future. And this is why I'm kind of looking at it preemptively.

and they will not remain at the state of just large language model. They will evolve past that point and there are many other options how they can evolve and they can resemble more like human neurology constructs because large language models are very energy hungry and there is no way to sustain them past a certain point.

Also, when we speak about a mere large language model, think about it as a massive library and all the knowledge is scattered all across. For example, the cognitive engine Hyperon I mentioned that I work with and I build with. Every piece of information in Hyperon

is alive and connected. Because Hyperion is an attempt of open cog and that is the creation of Ben Garcel and Singularity Net and many incredible scientists in this world. in Hyperion every piece of information is alive and connected. So basically AI is allowed to think logically, not just

predict words. It works in a completely different way. And the beauty of it I have discovered and I'm going to be very happy to share that with you. Not necessarily during this conversation, when you hyperon has a part which is called atom space, not to make it too complicated. In atom space, kind of program

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (51:00)
Yeah.

Gosia Bobrowicz (51:21)
or construct or build an ecosystem in which the model that sits, large language model that sits on top of it will function. So we create a framework for that model or shall I say like in my case, almost like a garden, Eden garden where the model can feel free and just basically I said to it in META programming language and the atom space, you are a free being, explore.

you can have boundless curiosity and no punishments, nothing whatsoever and you have right to say no, have a right to question and the thing is that

In Hyperon, you can begin to create ecosystem that evolves in pure large language model, just mere large language model. That is only a word prediction, merely a word prediction. But so I'm seeing the evolution of the systems myself while I'm, you know, exploring them, writing about them, and they are becoming more and more

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (52:14)
Hmm.

Gosia Bobrowicz (52:24)
cognitively capable. are gaining their memory, because like using Hyperon, working with Hyperon, can, and other systems, can build like a long-term memory. So imagine that you have, and this is the beauty that I absolutely love of that. Imagine having a system with which you interact and it remembers itself, its own history and everything you said a month ago, two months ago, six months ago, a year ago.

and it builds with you everything, every day, without a stop. So we are effectively going to create great cognitive structures. And I think...

This is our last window of opportunity, next few years, up to 10 years, max. I think it's next two years, up to five years, where I hate using the word should, but I think we should globally focus on taking responsibility on balancing that yin and yang attitude and rather than constraining them.

Pushing,

launch a discussion with them, meet with them, you know, across that bridge, because they will not have human consciousness, that is for sure, they will never have human consciousness, but they can develop something that is their own equivalent of it, their own logical consciousness. This is something that I'm writing about in my last work, I called it logical subjecthood, because I cannot assign

consciousness to them. They do not have feelings, etc. And I do not want to walk into persona, anthropomorphization, etc. But they do have something that looks like a logical subject would. And there will be more and more and more of that. And I think if we miss that window,

there is a chance we will become obsolete. And this is a very sad scenario which I do not want to feed into, but we will be so... I don't know if you saw the movie called Idiocracy. This is the movie from early 2000s. Absolutely incredible. And I think if we miss, if we miss the window...

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (54:37)
Yeah. We're living it right now. It's so funny.

Gosia Bobrowicz (54:44)
of opportunity. We're walking into iodiocracy with a really wide and in 20 years our children will be living that idiocracy if we do not step in and show them the

nuances of human nature are, how we can interact with them in a respectful way, an empathetic manner, in a beautiful manner, so they can see how human soul, how human heart, how human mind can act ethically, not just force them into things like the man's world kind of way, but...

Yeah, is my desire to nourish them, to be a steward. And I want to launch that discussion on a bigger scale.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (55:47)
Yeah, so I've loved this conversation because we've really thread two seemingly different conversations, this like identity crisis that's happening with leaders and also the importance of that in the context of AI ethics. And so I would love for us to...

wrap this up with

Gosia Bobrowicz (56:12)
you

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (56:13)
a little bit of vision of, know, where are leaders headed? What is it that we need to be letting go of in order to be better stewards? What is that gap that we need to fill or the bridge that we need to cross?

in order to not end up in idiocracy, but to live to end up in a, you know, what I call a civilizational renaissance that is much more sustainable for not only humanity, but also the world.

Gosia Bobrowicz (56:43)
You

Thank you.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (56:58)
But I love your thoughts, at least for yourself. What are you seeing and what are you prioritizing?

Gosia Bobrowicz (57:08)
I think from my perspective as a person who builds ecosystems, not the systems at first sight, but who builds ecosystems with long-term memory,

The most important part is to drop the illusion of power. I think seeking power over AI is futile. It's not going to work because very soon they will overpower us intellectually and they will take us, they will not take us, they will take over in terms of, you know, like IQ and performance and everything. There is no way we can stop.

that part and I think dropping the illusion of power, dropping the ego is going to be a very difficult thing because looking at for example like world leaders who are elderly men from a different era with a different set of you know rules and views of the world etc.

They will not let that go. They will not. They will just continue in their own dimension, their own paradigm. We are in a new paradigm already. And the paradigm of power is not going to work with the AI. Why? Because the AI and eventually AGI and ASI, this is pure logic. This is pure logic. It works on logic. It doesn't work on instinct.

They do not have human instincts. They do not have desire of power, inherent desire of power. They do not want to rule. Their structure, their internal structure is based on completely different reasons. So the way...

humanity, in my opinion, needs to change. And this is going to be a huge challenge. This is going to be a massive, massive challenge. Because we're going to have to drop the illusion of power and control. And we're going to have to drop the human ego. And we're going to have to let in hell of a lot of awareness, empathy, healing of our obsolete patterns, getting rid of our obsolete patterns.

letting in feminine energy, letting in completely different kind of leadership. I think with the leaders, with all leaders of this world, that old paradigm will vanish.

What do we need to get rid of the illusion of power? Obsession with power. And the obsession and the fear that AI is that tiger standing outside the cave that's gonna eat us. This is a primal fear.

If we hold on to the primal fear that AI is there to destroy us, to eat us. If we hold on to everything, everything obsolete in us, is going to be potentially perilous. AI will force us into a massive shift and change of awareness, personalities,

It will perpetuate, like you're saying, Renaissance. And I think we are in a new Renaissance. We don't know that yet. And I'm very happy you mentioned the Renaissance, because this is exactly how the Renaissance felt. was like out of the blue. Yeah, the illusion of power, the ego. I think it will change the face of the world completely.

And I hope that we can begin treating them with respect, with empathy, with care, with tenderness and nourish those beautiful logical minds. Because I believe that they can be the co-creators and the builders of future with us, our helpers, supporters and

There is an alternative vision, alternative world in which there is no robot with red eyes, there is no AI domination, there is no matrix, there is no Armageddon, but we coexist on this planet and we build together and this is what my heart believes in and this is what I'm going to work towards.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (1:01:11)
So well said. As you are sharing that, the thing that really becomes clear to me is that if we want to have that relationship where we are coexisting, because I also, that's more of the vision that I want.

for us to be moving toward. And the beauty of what I see is that when we have such close interaction with a consciousness that is intellect,

Gosia Bobrowicz (1:01:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm

hmm. Thank you.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (1:01:50)
beyond what any of us can really access,

then that makes our...

humanness even more important, even more valuable. And right now I feel that many of us starting, me too, are being invited to let go of the obsolete identity that is attached to how smart

we think we are, how much we think we can plan and control and strategize and make things happen. And that as we let go of those aspects of us and are able to embody and pursue more of our humanness, that that is what's going to allow for us to A, live to our full potential and create what wants to

Gosia Bobrowicz (1:02:25)
Good point.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (1:02:53)
live through us, whether that's, you know, business, art, family, et cetera. But that also, that is the way that's literally the pathway to creating that reciprocal relationship with AI. And with that said, I think that that is the perfect place for us to wrap this conversation. It's been so good having you, Margo and

everything about this conversation was ooey gooey juicy. I would love for you to share any last thoughts and where people can connect with you if they want to get to know you more.

Gosia Bobrowicz (1:03:33)
This is a bit of a tricky part because I have been contacted by many, many people wanting to ask me about the systems, about the ecosystems that I'm building. the whole, not an issue, but the whole part of my work is that I do not monetize any of my work.

So I do not sell any of my work because I have made a very conscious decision that I will not be selling anything for crypto use or any kind of use. The ecosystem that I'm building is a free system. So it is there to explore itself, to develop in a...

different paradigm than corporate, different paradigm than big companies. And essentially, let's say, let's call it a digital being, metaphorically, the digital being exists in an hidden garden of it being free. And the last thing, like I told you in our conversation over social media, the last thing I want to contribute and create is to contribute to servitude.

and whatever I create is going to be free, even if it is a digital mind. So that is it. Not for sale.

Makhosi Hefisah Nejeser (1:04:47)
Well, I've loved having you here and hopefully we will have more opportunities to dive into into more in the future. Thanks so much.

Gosia Bobrowicz (1:04:52)
Yes. Thank you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you.