I don’t think you can come across a person with so much diversity as my guest today Nikki Mirghafori, or in Persian it would be Mir - gah - foor- ri. She has grown up in Iran and then immigrated to the US where she studied at Stanford and UCLA and became a visiting professor at  UC Berkeley. There is a side of her that is interested in technology and AI, specifically the ethics of AI. But then there is the other side of her which is an empowered teacher who holds a lineage in Theravada Buddhism, she studied all different kinds of Buddism and felt connected to mediations and silent retreats.  She brings together, perhaps a bit like I do but a lot more, an interesting perspective of east and west of science and spirituality that  I believe is incredibly  needed in the times of confusion we are about to embark on,Nikki Mirghafori, PhD, is of Persian heritage and immigrated to the US in her teens.  She was introduced to contemplative practices and yoga in the early 1980s, to meditation in 1991, and to Theravada Buddhism in 2003. Nikki has studied at Stanford's CCARE and UCLA's MARC and is a Stanford-certified Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) instructor and UCLA-certified mindfulness MAPS facilitator.  She spent four years as a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley's Psychology Department with the renowned psychologist, Professor Eleanor Rosch, the co-author of the seminal book The Embodied Mind . Her teaching includes lectures, classes, day longs, workshops, silent retreats on meditation and Buddhist contemplation in the San Francisco Bay Area and internationally.  Concurrent with her dharma practice and teaching, Nikki has been an Artificial Intelligence scientist and academic at a research institute affiliated with UC Berkeley.  She holds a Ph.D. in computer science from UC Berkeley. She has also served on the IEEE P7010 Standards Committee on Well-Being Metrics for Ethical AI.

Listen as we discuss:

• 03:00 - Science and spirituality
• 06:30 - The Islamic Revolution
• 09:00 - Change of scenery
• 11:30 - Falling in love
• 13:00 - Meeting mortality 
• 16:30 - The Four Noble Truths
• 19:00 - Grief is the price we pay for love
• 23:00 - The tick that bit me
• 24:30 - Silent retreat
• 27:00 - The well of sadness
• 31:00 - The gift of space
• 34:00 - Human connections and awakening
• 39:00 - A question of singularity 
• 43:00 - Weak AI Vs Strong AI
• 48:00 - The consciousness of trees 
• 51:00 - Buddist cosmology
• 56:00 - Already here
• 01:01:00 - Is AI conscious?
• 01:08:00 - Where are the ethics?
• 01:15:30 - Snake Oil Phenomenon
• 01:21:00 - Spiritual AI
• 01:25:00 - Utopia Vs Dystopia
• 01:33:00 - How to break the rules ethically
• 01:38:30 - The practice of goodwill
• 01:41:00 - Greed, hatred and confusion

Connect with Nikki Twitter @NikkiMirghafori and LinkedIn. Find out more about her work here.

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