Is the Future of AI In Bhutan?

I’m in Bhutan this week with a group of experienced, wise, and diverse innovators for a collaborative, week-long listening and brainstorming engagement with Bhutanese leadership to study and iterate on Bhutan’s unique approach to natural resource use, bioregional development, urban planning, sovereign AI innovation, and consciousness science.Original essay here.Bhutan offers a glimpse into a different future of technology innovation. Drawing on a week-long visit with Bhutanese leaders, the episode contrasts Silicon Valley’s techno-utopian, extractive AI paradigm with Bhutan’s emphasis on Gross National Happiness, bioregional design, and “technologies of the sacred” such as meditation and ritual. I argue that today’s large, general-purpose AI systems mostly reinforce a Eurocentric worldview. As an alternative, the episode highlights the opportunity for Bhutan to leverage sovereign, hyper-local AI models powered by renewable energy and rooted in Bhutanese/Tibetan/Sanskrit knowledge traditions. It situates these experiments within Bhutan’s real challenges—like youth emigration and alcohol dependency—and frames the country as a testbed for domain-specific, non-extractive AI systems that prioritize wisdom, contentment, and ecological reciprocity over scale and efficiency.Bhutan's Gelephu Mindfulness CityPope Leo calls for being ‘profoundly human’ in the age of AI (The Verge)Support the showJoin Chad's newsletter to learn about all new offerings, courses, trainings, and retreats. Finally, you can support the podcast here.