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 Stanfordcertified Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) instructor and UCLAcertified 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 coauthor 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 WellBeing Metrics for Ethical AI.

Listen as we discuss:

Science and spirituality
The Islamic Revolution
Change of scenery
Falling in love
Meeting mortality
The Four Noble Truths
Grief is the price we pay for love
The tick that bit me
Silent retreat
The well of sadness
The gift of space
Human connections and awakening
A question of singularity
Weak AI Vs Strong AI
The consciousness of trees
Buddist cosmology
Already here
Is AI conscious?
Where are the ethics?
Snake Oil Phenomenon
Spiritual AI
Utopia Vs Dystopia
How to break the rules ethically
The practice of goodwill
Greed, hatred and confusion

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

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Website: mogawdat.com

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0:00 Slo Mo Intro
1:00 Guest Intro
3:35 Episode
1:52:36 Outro