Spirituality & Technology

An overview to a stunning combo.

The world I knew was oblivious to the role of “AI Trainer” when I got tapped to take on this new, albeit quirky, job title in 2018 when I was introduced to the possibility of becoming the first person to take on it in an AI fintech startup in Berkeley. I say quirky because it was an odd topic at that time in my global professional network and personal communities - most people thought it was cool but didn’t know what it really was apart from what they saw in the movies. Most people feared it. So folks we’re scratching their heads on the concept of me entering the AI space.

I was clueless about artificial intelligence as I glided from a 10-day Vipassana Meditation training in Sri Lanka, and into Rishikesh, the yoga capital of the world, swimming in the rich essence of Mother Ganges at the foothills of the Himalayas. I was getting ready to become certified to teach Hatha Yoga, Meditation, and Ayurveda. My plan was to transition into a career in spiritual arts, having come from a long tenure of leading global tech teams in Silicon Valley companies.

I finished my two-month-long studies in Central Asia and came back to Manila with not just an RYT-200 (Registered Yoga Teacher - clocking in 200 hours), but also a spanking-new job as an AI Trainer. I was mortified at the thought of entering a completely new world (although I worked in tech for years, fintech and AI, combined, never crossed my vocabulary before then), starting from the ground, establishing myself as an AI professional while building myself up as a yoga teacher. That same mortification pumped me up to say yes to the challenge, plus the rare chance to be mentored by three brilliant minds - the founders of the startup - was something I couldn’t pass up.

In the next 3 months following that decision, I was thrown into what felt like a boot camp of sorts on MBA, fintech, and AI. All of this while embracing the startup’s culture and values that the founders designed - it’s a beautiful synergy of teachings from spiritual concepts, best practices from wildly successful business models, tried-and-tested tech product development framework, and the unique essence of the founders. The company built cool artificially-intelligent virtual assistants, which I eventually learned how to conceptualize, design and build from the ground, anchored to this holistic approach to building cool tech products in a break-neck speed crazy world. There was a tender, balanced sway between the overall well-being of the humans working in the company, the success of the partners and clients we had, and the bots being built to augment people’s lives.

I’ve never seen anything like it. As I studied and worked my way up to truly earning the AI Trainer title that I signed up for, I was enveloped in equal parts spirituality and big technology in and out of the workplace. I morphed into an AI professional who was also a yoga teacher preparing to get into spiritual arts. Through the journey, I learned that they can co-exist in a person’s life, and they don’t need to be separate at all. In fact, they complement each other. From another angle, I can even boldly say that one gives birth to the other. The other cannot exist without the one thing existing first.

But which of them gives birth to the other? Spirituality first then technology? Technology then Spirituality?

That’s for a future post, where other intersections of spirituality & technology would be shared, too.