Deepak Choprathe health guru, spiritual advisor of Oprah Winfrey and founder of the Chopra Foundation focused on well-being, is betting everything on artificial intelligence.
The 95th book of Chopra, Digital Dharma: How AI can elevate spiritual intelligence and personal well-being It is published this week. The book received a positive review from OpenAI CEO, Sam Altmanwho is “very spiritual,” says Chopra. “He loves to meditate, so we became good friends.”
Speaking via Zoom from New York, the 77-year-old calls the book “a great adventure. “We are taking spirituality, philosophy, religion and science, and AI, and putting them all together.”
In June, Chopra launched Digital Deepakwhat he calls his AI twin. Digital Deepak can answer questions about health and spirituality in English, Spanish, Hindi and Arabic. The real one Chopra He’s also signed up for voice cloning startup ElevenLabs, so now an AI version of him can read anything out loud, whether it’s his own books or the Tripitaka.
He says that one of the ways in which Digital Deepak can be helpful is by giving advice to help manage stress. “In my experience, no matter what you do, stress trumps everything,” he says. Choprawho claims to have seen people who eat healthy diets and exercise frequently become ill due to chronic stress. “Unless we address stress, everything else becomes, you know, marginally effective.”
So I asked a question to Digital DeepakI told the AI that I was stressed about a deadline, and it advised me to take deep breaths to calm my mind, break the task into smaller chunks, and meditate.
The advice was similar, if somewhat obvious, to what the real Chopra he told me when I asked him how to better manage stress. He advised me to do breathing exercises and tools like yoga or go for a walk outdoors.
Chopra He adds that one of the benefits of AI, as opposed to just reading its books to get its conclusions on everything from stress to spirituality, is being able to communicate with an audience in their own language in real time.
He recalls a recent trip to Lima, Peru, where translation was often a problem. “Before there was all this mess, and now people were asking questions to Digital Deepak in Spanish and I got the answers in Spanish,” he says. “It gives access to all my knowledge about personal well-being without necessarily speaking the same language.”
It says it has further plans to integrate its AI twin with the fast-growing wearable device market.
“If you wear an Oura ring or an Apple Watch, it monitors things like your sleep patterns, and then we can personalize your well-being for you,” he says. Chopra. He adds that the data is already there and just needs to be leveraged properly.
But no matter how advanced these new systems may seem, he says they are no match for the human experience. “Your creativity will never be replaced by a machine. Because, after all, machines are algorithms, and creativity is fundamentally breaking the algorithm,” he says. “It just gives you the opportunity to tap into your creativity with a broader knowledge base.”
Fountain: Bloomberg / Washington Post.
Photos: Reuters and EFE/ Gian Ehrenzeller.
