Spiritual Intelligence: Community in the Age of AI

The prediction was that we would all disappear into the screen. Instead the run clubs have waitlists, the supper clubs sell out in an afternoon, and in-person attendance at meetups and live events is past where it stood before the pandemic. The more of ordinary life the models absorb, the harder people are working to be in a room with each other. This panel is about what that return is really asking for, and what it is quietly costing.

Who this is for

Organizers, founders building for a group of people rather than a market, and anyone who has tried to turn a group chat into something that actually meets.

On the table

• Why the swing back to gathering is happening now, and whether it is a correction or a rebound that fades
• What a paid community sells that a free one cannot, and what the price changes about who is in the room
• What a tradition that has kept its third spaces open and unpriced for centuries makes of belonging as a subscription

You'll leave with

• A read on which parts of belonging survive being designed, priced and moderated, and which do not
• The honest case for and against charging for access, and what it does to who shows up
• A test for whether the thing you are building is a membership or an audience