I spend most of my time promoting psychologically safe human interactions through Emotional Fitness Peer Coaching. I do this through one-on-one sessions, leading and participating in group sessions and full-day workshops with both managers and people with chronic conditions — and sometimes giving lectures and keynotes on listening and coaching skills, as well as how bias shapes our actions in ways we are often unaware of.
I am also a PhD student in the History of Science & Ideas who realized 30+ years ago that my dissertation would likely not be very impactful and that I needed to see more of society than I had at the time—and therefore left my dissertation on the meaning of Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) as a moral example to his admirers. When I returned to my unfinished research some 25 years later, I found the topic surprisingly coherent with the things I had been working on in completely different domains (leadership, gender, and diversity) in ways that are worthy their own posts.
Later, I also realized that Albert Schweitzer’s once highly influential thinking on Reverence for Life was, in fact, an attempt to solve something that seems remarkably relevant to today’s AI alignment endeavors—a universal summary of the ethics of all major religions.
Schweitzer lived long enough to be both a global moral superstar and to be seen as irrelevant and to be rightly criticized for many of his attitudes, thoughts and choices. That criticism doesn’t undo everything he thought and achieved—and to me it seems there may be guidance for AI alignment in how he thought about protecting life.