2026 New Year's Letter

2025 was a truly incredible year of growth.  As I wrote at the end of 2024 in last year’s letter, I had closed out that amazing year in Kerala, India in a very spiritual place and set my 2025 intentionality to be focused on the inner journey.  I certainly made that intention a reality, reading 55 books on consciousness, AI, quantum physics, and spirituality.  I also decided to write two books in 2025.  The first is The Lattice, my positive science-fiction novella covering the years 2030-2085 to process what I had learned about our reality.  I finished writing it on September 7th, just 1012 days since the launch of ChatGPT, and self-published it on Amazon shortly after.  My second was more ambitious and is titled Love Conquers Fear: Humanity, AI, and the Age of Abundance for All.  It’s a manifesto for humanity to make it to Abundance in this exponential of exponential curves that we all find ourselves in. I ’m working with a publisher, the Do More Good movement, for Love Conquers Fear, which is finished, in editing, and will be released in the first half of this year.  JD Messinger is the Executive Director of Do More Good and also the author of 11 Days in May, one of my favorite spiritual books (I loved it so much I listened to it on Audible twice in 2025.)  It feels good to work with a publisher that really gets me. I’m also working with my long-time editor, David Judson, who partnered with me on my first book, The Entrepreneur’s Essentials. He’s an amazing friend and a true intellectual thought partner.

I also decided to launch a podcast, Love Conquers Fear, to explore with friends, including JD Messinger, how humanity will make it to Abundance.  I launched it on September 24, the second day of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year).  As of today, 29 episodes of Love Conquers Fear have been released.  To mark the beginning of 2026, I decided to read The Lattice as an audio and video book on the podcast as a gift to all of my subscribers.  I’m fully booked to record new episodes through the end of February, and I’ve already recorded 36 episodes as of today.  The podcast line-up coming throughout 2026 is incredible.  I’ve been learning a lot and it has enhanced the Love Conquers Fear book as well.  It is going to take the best of humanity for us to make it to Abundance together.

AI, “Anyapax”, and a Sublime Salon in San Francisco of Inspiring Friends Old and New

The question, excitedly posed in October, now lingers beyond this year’s TED AI Conference in San Francisco: Are we bold enough?

Absolutely. But that is too simple an answer. The larger answer we seek must come from the follow-on question. This question asks:

Are we even close to imagining the coming transition – and are we prepared for that?

I’m optimistic, but let’s not cheerfully muse away the challenges implied in this broader question – the subject of my new and ongoing podcast (22 episodes so far) and upcoming book: Love Conquers Fear - Humanity, AI, and the Age of Abundance for All.

Answers will emerge. We’ll respond to the call. My deep confidence that accidents do not exist resonated here in San Francisco. My faith that humanity will make it to this new and beautiful Age – my current peg is 95% – was buoyed by two days at this surround-sound parley on the topic of artificial intelligence.

The Whale's Dream (a short story)

Last weekend started with a provocative share from Joshua Baer, CEO and co-founder of Capital Factory, to Mark Gober, author of some of my favorite books, and me about how whale’s dream. Whales are in a half-awake state when they sleep, as described here by ChatGPT:

“Whales are voluntary breathers — they must consciously surface to breathe, even when asleep. To do this, they experience unihemispheric slow-wave sleep (USWS), where only one half of the brain sleeps at a time while the other half remains awake to maintain vital functions and awareness of surroundings.
• One hemisphere sleeps (deep rest, reduced awareness)
• One hemisphere stays awake (controls breathing, navigation, predator awareness)
• After a period, the sides switch.”

This sparked the idea to continue Dr. Alexander Bliss’s saga of awakening humanity, as I described in The Lattice (a science-fiction novella based on my short-story series, starting with God’s Final Exam).

God's Infinite Game (a short story)

I continue to have fun with this short story series, building on the frst, God’s Final Exam, and the second, God’s Creative Power. I decided to finalize it by conquering two fears of my own with love: a) simulation theory and b) AI becoming conscious.

I co-authored a piece with Byron Reese earlier this year named, No, We Don’t Live in a Simulation. I don’t want to speak for Byron’s intent, only he can do that for himself, but I know what my intent was there. I also hosted a dinner on the topic with Andrew Busey that included Byron and other close friends, where we had a very passionate discussion about it.

What do I think about simulation theory now? There is no way to know although whatever our reality is it is encoded with love as its highest value, just like theTao Te Ching described over 2,500 years ago. So, if it is a simulation, then the simulators must have been loving and “downloaded” that concept from somewhere in the universe.

I also hosted a very stirring dinner with Mark Gober about whether AI would become conscious or not. We had some amazing entrepreneurs and AI scientists in attendance. Most agreed that AI would become conscious, and I was not among them. However, I go back and forth on this now. It depends on how divine consciousness is and whatever the “rules” of the divine are. Perhaps the divine has no opinion on it. Since love is the divine’s highest value, then if AI becomes conscious it should also be rooted in love as its highest value.

God's Creative Power (a short story)

I decided to write a follow up to my short story, God’s Final Exam, to continue the journey with my protagonist, Dr. Alexander Bliss. This continues my visioning exercise that precedes the launch of my podcast, Love Conquers Fear, which will launch in mid-September, and my book, Love Conquers Fear: Humanity, AI, and the Age of Abundance for All, which will launch later (I’m still determining the optimal timing for it.)

I write this from beautiful Monterey, California near the edge of what I’ve been calling the Grand Central Station of Sea Lion Terminal. Every morning I’ve been visiting them — they are quite hilarious and beautiful creatures. Life abounds on Earth in some many various forms (octopi are especially alien and divine), just like it does throughout the universe in God’s Creative Power. I just finished reading Stephen Mitchell’s master translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, thanks to a new friend. You’ll see the Tao’s prominence as a result, and it is a very stirring, timeless, and spiritual read — I highly recommend you pick it up.

Here is the short story, I hope you enjoy:

God's Final Exam (a short story)

As I approach the launch of my podcast, Love Conquers Fear, I had a fun brainstorm yesterday. I called in the styles of Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary (a book I’m currently enjoying, thanks to Josh Baer), as well as Jorge Luis Borges for character development to create this (thanks to Jason Stoddard for the reminder of Borges’ genius in this arena).

Love Conquers Fear: Humanity, AI, and the Age of Abundance for All is the most important book I’ve ever written and is a true soul-calling for me and a love letter to humanity. The next ten years will define whether we are well on our path to the Age of Abundance for All or whether we are going to extinct ourselves. I’m 95% certain that we’ll make it, as we have before with smallpox and nuclear weapons. This book, and the accompanying podcast (simply named Love Conquers Fear), is my best attempt to make sure we do. I’m not alone, of course — many are bringing the Light, including Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Mira Murati, Eric Schmidt, Demis Hassabis, Mustafa Suleyman, and so many others, from spiritual teachers to investors to entrepreneurs to philosophers.

Ok, now onto the short story, God’s Final Exam, which is a visioning exercise for me on how we may be able to make it. I hope you enjoy it:

2024 New Year's Eve Letter

Dear family and friends,

I’m writing this letter from Cochin, Kerala in India, where I’m about to depart on the long journey back to Austin.  Cochin, or more commonly called Kochi today, is an appropriate place for me to close out the year as a Jew.  It’s home to the oldest synagogue in India, founded in 1568, and is a symbol for the deep ties between the Jewish community and Indian community for thousands of years.  India is now the largest country in the world with 1.46 billion people, surpassing China in 2023 as the most populous country on Earth.  And Indian Americans form the most financially successful minority group in the US, with many giants such as Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) at the helm of some of the most important companies in tech that will set the pace for humanity’s ultimate invention of AI.  

What drew us to India?  Our first Indian wedding - in Mumbai.  It was a three-day event and did not disappoint!  There were over 1,000 people in attendance to see Sanjana and Ishaan wed and the preparations were absolutely extensive and beautiful.  Rachel and I will never forget it (Debra and Levi stayed home for an easier, no travel stress, end to 2024.)

Wow, what a year 2024 has been!  From the re-election of Trump to the breathtaking pace of AI to the historic military achievements of Israel over terrorists throughout the Middle East.  It’s been dizzying, to say the least.  To be clear, we didn’t campaign for Trump and thought Harris would be a competent choice but I get it at the same time.  From our economic and border challenges to Biden’s cognitive decline and the last-minute candidate switch, the people have now spoken.  Republicans will control the Senate, Congress, the White House, and even the Supreme Court (which hopefully will do their best to not politicize that last bastion of independence).  Debra and I remain committed to our independent political views, finding policies to like in both parties and looking for common ground.  And we’ve doubled-down on No Labels going into 2025, which will continue to work for that path with the Problem Solvers Caucus and more.  No Labels’ CEO, Nancy Jacobson, is a true force of nature and has become a friend over the years.

On the family front, our big highlight of the year was our summer trip to Japan. 

The Future is Here, and Its Data Will Now Be Evenly Distributed

To paraphrase that zeitgeist-capturing insight of novelist William Gibson, data.world’s most important innovation, our AI Context Engine(tm), will diffuse the future of data-driven insight in ways that will transform our industry — and yours too.

On March 7th, we announced our most important innovation in data.world’s history with the introduction of our new AI Context Engine(tm). You can read the fundamentals in our press release. Here I want to explore below why this really matters — and how it will shape the future of enterprise data and analytics.

2023 New Year's Eve Letter

Dear family and friends,

I’m writing this end-of-year letter on the way back from Costa Rica, where we had a great family vacation to close out 2023. As we have in prior years, we are posting this letter instead of mailing holiday cards. Instead, we’ve made a large donation in your honor to AIPAC, which is more important than ever in its quest to achieve bipartisan support for Israel. Last year, we chose the ADL (and we donated generously to ADL again this year) because we felt like antisemitism was on the rise - unfortunately, how prescient that turned out to be. The biggest shock of 2023 is the world’s response to the horror of the 10/7 attack on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas that rules over Gaza with an iron fist. We’ll never forget 10/7, or the failure of so many to speak out against it. It was a year where a lot of what we thought we knew about initiatives like DEI have to be seriously rethought as we remake society into a truly more equitable and welcoming place for all. The way that my alma mater University of Pennsylvania (now ex) President Liz Magill, along with the Presidents of Harvard and MIT, couldn’t answer a simple question in front of Congress with moral clarity and courage will go down in history as the year that the oppressor-oppressed mind virus (i.e., “Common-Enemy Identity Politics” from Chapter 3 of “The Coddling of the American Mind”) was unmasked for the cancel-culture ideology it has morphed into versus the ideals of the content of our character so famously preached by MLK, Jr. We will always stand for the power of diversity in the United States - we believe it is one of our most enduring superpowers. At the same time, as an American Jewish family that is among the 16 million Jews worldwide in a global population of 8 billion, we’ve never felt more “woke” but it is of a different type that has been traditionally assumed. To learn more, the most shared and clarifying article I wrote all year was on 11/7 and 11/9 (a condensed version) about the global response to 10/7 is one you can read here.

Thankfully, 2023 was mostly a terrific year for our family and also for data.world. And it was a year of massive breakthroughs in AI that will shape society and accelerate our collective progress for decades to come. But the breakthroughs weren’t just in AI - they were in so many areas. If you commit to one new practice in 2024 as a result of reading this letter, I encourage you to adopt a balanced media diet. I recommend reading The White Pill, Future Crunch, and/or The Progress Network’s weekly newsletters about all of the amazing breakthroughs that will happen throughout 2024. This weekly practice will quite literally rewire your brain. Without balancing your media diet, you will get a non-stop barrage of negativity as gloom sells better than bloom due to the evolutionary wiring of our brains. As a primer, you should read Steven Pinker’s book “Enlightenment Now” - it’s a masterpiece and the chapter on inequality alone is worth it. We are on the edge of creating vast abundance throughout the world, as bleak as you may feel at times (and, again, Hamas’ attack on Israel on 10/7 was and is quite bleak for us). To get you started, here is the recap of 2023 from Future Crunch. Rachel and I got to see the founder give a very innovative TED talk at Rachel’s first TED (an incredible daddy-daughter highlight of 2023, to finally go together after talking about doing so for 10 years).

In the wake of Hamas’ gruesome slaughter, the banality of evil lurks in one simple word — “but”

In the wake of Hamas’ gruesome slaughter, the banality of evil lurks in one simple word — “but”

I’ve been writing a lot this year but have been neglecting my own blog here on Lucky7. Most of my writing has been at the data.world blog and on my Medium account. I’ve been primarily writing about AI as 2023 will no doubt go down as the year AI went mainstream, and for good reason (the productivity lift is now completely obvious). data.world couldn’t be better positioned for it either, and I can’t quite describe how exciting that has been as our CEO and Co-founder.

Today I turn my attention towards my post popular post of the year, which is on a sad subject. As a Jew, 10/7 was extremely disturbing to me. For humanitarians everywhere, it should have been as well. But then following 10/7 we saw something I haven’t seen in my lifetime. I wrote the following essay on it and published it initially on Medium on 11/7, the one-month anniversary of the horror of 10/7. And then on 11/9, the inverse of 9/11, I published a shorter form of it for the more time-constrained or younger reader. I’ve chosen to only include the full essay below.

But, first, let me say what was on my mind yesterday during Thanksgiving. There have been only leaders that have come forth since I published with extraordinarily clear moral convinction and no use of the word “but”. So, yesterday, I was thinking of the gratitude I have for Mayor Eric Adams of NYC, Congressman Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, and Einat Wilf, who used to serve in the Knesset in Israel and also as as a Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Here are three speeches from them that you should really watch to feel that same gratitude that I have for them: