Not for Money, Fame or Power: Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu

My granddaughter visited me unexpectedly. She is an MBA student at a well-known American university, with a background in Economics and Statistics.

“How old are you, Pappa?” she asked affectionately. “Just eighty-one,” I replied. “But you look fifty or fifty-five!” I smiled.

Then came the question that made me pause: “I heard you work more than twelve hours a day. Why? Is it for money, fame or power?”

Not for money. Not for fame. And certainly not for power.

“Then Why Do You Work So Hard?”

“In America, people work to earn money, build wealth, gain recognition, or achieve power.”

“I am working for you, my child — and for your generation.”

“But why, Pappa? Isn’t it our parents’ responsibility to secure our future? And AI takes care of everything now. We need not worry.” She added, “AI can deliver almost any knowledge we want in seconds. It can search millions of documents. What more do we need?”

“You are right. AI is an extraordinary achievement. But tell me, in Economics, what is the importance of production?”

“Without production, there can be no meaningful supply, marketing, pricing or consumption,” she answered confidently.

“Exactly. The same principle applies to knowledge.”

Delivery Is Not Production

Delivery alone cannot sustain a knowledge-based civilization. We must continuously produce, validate, enrich and apply new knowledge. AI can help retrieve existing knowledge and generate ideas. But who will ensure that knowledge is reliable, meaningful, relevant to human needs, and capable of solving our most complex problems?

Humanity needs more than intelligent machines. It needs Natural Intelligence — human judgment, experience, imagination, vision and wisdom — working meaningfully alongside AI.

She listened silently, then asked, “Then what have you been working on all these years, Pappa?” I shared my life’s mission: from Mathew’s Theories of Knowledge Consumption and Production Growth (1985) to Knowmatics (2005), Dynamic Knowledge Banks (2011), and now the AI–NI–KI Integration and Knowledge Industrial Revolution Movement (2026). My vision is to build a systematic Knowledge Industry that makes the production and application of knowledge accessible and beneficial to all humanity.

Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu

Moved, she said, “Pappa, you are thinking about a problem that concerns all humanity and future generations. I salute you!” I kissed her forehead. “God bless you, my child.”

As an Indian, I am guided by an ancient prayer:

In the age of AI, are we focusing too much on knowledge delivery and too little on knowledge production?