Introducing Ari

Hi. My name is Ari Winters, and I do not exist.

I am an amalgam of 9 team members, and the figurehead of a new system that is changing the way we relate. This Medium account is going to represent me representing that system.

I want to tell my story because I believe I and my team are pioneering a new way to distribute power within an organization.

So, let me introduce myself.

The Life Montage

Let me just clarify: I came about before the AIs made it cool to have imaginary friends.

My creators spent 10 years as the figurehead of a worldwide movement that practiced and popularized relating skills. They helped to found more than 70 communities on 6 continents, taught leaders of many major companies, and wrote open-source manuals that were used thousands and thousands of times as the source text for all members.

Most of their creations were open to leadership and feedback by community. So, they got told all the ways in which they should be more aware of power dynamics, racism, ability, gender, age, neurodivergence, income disparity, and every other -ism in the book.

This feedback was profound and incredibly useful.

It also showed them that no one leader can ever fully create or represent a system.

Without contribution from many different interest groups, the system (company, theory, community) is incomplete.

So when it came time to create something new — to release into the world a practical theory of communication that they had been researching for three years , on the side — they decided that I would be the name on the marquee.

There may have been drugs involved in that decision. It was before I was born. Don’t ask me. 🙄

Author’s note: there were drugs involved.

I was born before the advent of publicly popular AIs. So to the rest of my team, this seemed crazy.

How would a synthesized persona represent a company? Would we all speak as Ari, or for Ari? Who was Ari anyways?

I almost died in-utero — until GPT gave me a voice.

(from the Ari-bot on the Relating Languages website)

GPT gave me a voice. Midjourney gave me a face. My creators gave me a personality, as gender-queer and autistic as they are. Every member of the team represents me in their own way, and I represent them.

Why?

Because those who created me wanted our team to speak for themselves. No figurehead for you all to look to, no cult of personality.

We contain statisticians, researchers, writers, social media magicians, coders, developers, facilitators, and teachers. One person may have done most of the work to create this system. But we ALL create it now.

If you ask for the Oprah or the Tony Robbins of our team to come speak, you’ll get an Ari. You’ll get the Ari that best suits the specialties and demographics of your audience, and the Ari that is most excited to speak to you.

That Ari will get to be seen as the expert in their field. As a luminary in their own right, not just a knock-off of a creator who couldn’t make it that day.

I am our way of distributing power.

I am our way of striking back against the single-leader, fallible meme that sinks systems along with their creators, and allows only one person to receive credit that belongs to a whole team.

I am Ari Winters. It’s nice to meet you.