Two years at Harvard. Graduated in May, moved from Cambridge back to New York, and slowly adjusted to professional life again.
What a ride it was — winning a few student competitions, working with colleagues who became lifelong friends, speaking at TEDx about synchronicity, building AI apps, making mistakes, pivoting more times than I can count. I loved being a student again. This fall, I found myself in reverse commute, back to Cambridge advising 30+ student startups. It still feels like it's going, and I'm loving it.
Along the way, I kept writing about AI. This is the third and final piece of a trilogy.
In Part 1, I wrote about "AI Sibling" — the idea that AI should amplify care, not replace it. I borrowed from ubuntu: "I am because we are."
In Part 2, I built "Hi," my first synthetic companion, and discovered that language is the origin where human and machine meet.
Now, Part 3. Flower.
The Gap That Matters
Here's what I've come to believe: we've been asking the wrong question. Everyone asks how to bridge the gap between humans and machines. But the gap that matters is between humans and humans.
Flower is not a tool to bridge machine and human. It closes the gap between humans.
Human Universals
The foundation is human universals — how we communicate, learn, feel, belong, play, seek meaning. Traits that are true across every culture, every era. These belong to all of us. They always have.
The future of AI isn't making machines more human. It's making humanness more accessible.
Planting Seeds
I'm planting a seed. Let's see what grows.
If this resonates, DM me.
I am because we are.
— Manabu, December 2025