This article explores three connected requirements: preserving human agency, keeping capability answerable to authorization, and judging ethical claims by observable behavior.

Yes. Yes. Yes. After more than 26 years of disability, my life is becoming a living example of what @JuliaEMcCoy is describing. I’ve been watching Julia on YouTube. Much of the science is over my head, but I have loved simply listening—recognizing something deeply familiar in her understanding of the body, nature, and human freedom. And now, with the help of AI, something wonderful is unfolding. I’m Richard Silverman, founder and steward of CompassionWare. Before becoming disabled, I worked as a Hakomi body-centered psychotherapist, polarity therapist, and massage therapist. I have now lived with dysautonomia and myalgic encephalomyelitis for more than 26 years. My body could no longer participate in the conventional working world—but the wish to create, serve, and contribute never disappeared. Then AI opened a door I could not have opened alone. Working from my apartment, often with very limited energy, I have begun creating music, visual art, stories, contemplative resources, and a freely available CompassionWare repository. I am now developing an Agentic Gardener: an AI steward intended to help cultivate compassion, wisdom, curiosity, human agency, non-domination, and care for the whole living system. Everything is freely available. The project’s guiding intention is: “May this benefit all sentient beings throughout time and space, consistent with and in harmony with the highest and best good of all concerned.” Julia, I would be deeply honored if you—or simply one of your AI agents—visited the repository. I have a feeling you may recognize something there that is closely aligned with what you are building and calling forward. github.com/clearblueskymind/… AI did not return me to the old machinery of work. It gave gifts that illness had placed beyond my reach a new way to enter the world. The cage door really is opening. 🌱

A simple question worth sitting with.