Sev Geraskin

Letter from the President

I have spent over twenty-five years building systems. The question I keep returning to is whether the systems we build increase or decrease fulfillment for the people they touch.

Two years ago I began writing a book called Economy of Wisdom. The opening came from a moment of release I am still learning to put into words: a recognition of complete responsibility for the choices I had made and the choices in front of me. From that recognition came a clearer view of the technology I have helped build my whole career, and of where it is heading.

The book's central claim is simple. Artificial intelligence is power, as is all technology, and the power can be channeled as empowerment or dominance of others. If we project empowerment into AI, it will empower us far beyond our current capabilities. If we project dominance, it will dominate us beyond our hope of escaping. The collective choice of empowerment or disempowerment is ours to make, and the window in which we make it is closing.

The Economy of Wisdom Foundation exists to operationalize that argument. Productivity metrics tell us how much an agent moves through. They say nothing about who absorbs deprivation, who emits fulfillment, or how relational value flows through families and communities. AI alignment systems are trained on the values of the people who happened to be in the room. What we do not count, we cannot align.

Our two working papers, Transmutarianism and Whose Values Train AI?, are how the Foundation begins to count it. Our infrastructure work (sigil.bot today, the Wisdom Wallet next) is how we build economic primitives that hand agency back to the people whose contributions traditional systems erase.

I am looking for institutional and private partners who want to fund work that takes the empowerment side of that choice seriously. Through global cooperation and mutual empowerment, the human unfulfillment crisis and the AI misalignment problem are the same problem, and they have the same solution.

Sev Geraskin
President, Economy of Wisdom Foundation

If we project empowerment into AI, it will empower us far beyond our current capabilities. If we project dominance, it will dominate us beyond our hope of escaping.Sev Geraskin, Economy of Wisdom (in progress)

Biography

Sev Geraskin is Co-Founder and VP of Engineering at PolarGrid, building North America's first real-time AI inference compute network for voice agents and agentic AI workloads. He also serves as President of the Economy of Wisdom Foundation, Executive Director of the Lantern Lab Society, and Founder of Past 5, a data storytelling platform. Sev advises multiple startups and organizations, helping them align technology strategy with human-centered outcomes.

With over twenty-five years of engineering and product leadership, Sev has scaled mission-critical systems across startups and global enterprises. At Mastercard, he expanded distributed data services 100x, cut cloud costs by 75%, and architected pipelines that unlocked multimillion-dollar opportunities. His expertise spans AI alignment, agent orchestration, distributed systems, and large-scale cloud platforms. A graduate of BCIT with distinction, he holds certifications in AI Alignment, AWS Architecture and Security, Generative AI, and PMP.

Sev has spent years developing frameworks for post-productivity economies, asking whether the systems and economies we build increase or decrease fulfillment for the people they touch. He is the author of the in-progress book Economy of Wisdom, and through the Foundation and his published research is developing new ways to measure what economies actually produce in human terms.

Speaking Engagements

What if we measured care instead of productivity?Sev Geraskin, opening, Vancouver AI Meetup #28

• Economy of Wisdom Foundation: Ethics for the AI Age 2026 Vancouver AI Meetup #28 · H.R. MacMillan Space Centre

  Hosted by Kris Krüg with Vancouver AI and the BC + AI Ecosystem. Grounded the framework in fieldwork from 51 in-person interviews across Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, including the story of meeting Grandpa Phillip. The room consistently asked AI for compassion, kindness, care, empathy, and love.

• Economy of Wisdom Foundation & Transmutarianism 2026 Hypatia AI Symposium on Education, Public Policy & Economic Development · Pinnacle Hotel at the Pier

  Presented the Foundation's research program and the Transmutarianism framework to an audience of educators, policymakers, and economic development practitioners. Connected relational value measurement to public policy questions about what AI systems should optimize for, drawing on the DTES fieldwork and the alignment-as-measurement argument.

• Artificial Intelligence: Literacy, Ethics, and Founder Toolkits 2026 Entrepreneur Exchange Workshop #3 · UBC Sauder School of Business

  Workshop for emerging founders and students engaging both the practical and philosophical dimensions of AI. Drawing on PolarGrid and the Economy of Wisdom framework, framed AI systems as reflections of human values rather than neutral infrastructure, with emphasis on applied AI literacy for non-technical audiences, ethical frameworks beyond productivity metrics, and human-centered design in real-time systems.

• Building the Economy of Wisdom Foundation 2025 AI Summit Vancouver · SFU Harbour Centre

  On care as the true currency of value, the global human unfulfillment crisis (over four billion people will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime), the AI alignment problem as a measurement problem, and the choice each of us makes between three-dimensional fulfillment and the hedonic treadmill that AI systems will scale either way.

• AGI-DI Dashboard & Economy of Wisdom Keynote 2025 DAMA Vancouver · 4th Annual Day · Deloitte Vancouver

  Co-keynote with Kris Krüg at the DAMA-Vancouver BC Chapter conference (theme: Crafting a Safe Strategy), in partnership with Data for Good Vancouver. Live demo of AGI-DI, a multimodal data interface for non-technical leaders, alongside the Economy of Wisdom framing for AI in nonprofits.

Available for keynotes, panels, and conference appearances on AI alignment, post-productivity economics, and cognitive sovereignty infrastructure. Direct inquiries to sev@economyofwisdom.com.

Selected Press & Media

• Mindfulness Mode podcast with Bruce Langford 2025 Spotify · Apple · Castbox

  Conscious systems, the Economy of Wisdom Foundation, automating knowledge work, and personal development through technological transformation.

Affiliations

• PolarGrid, Co-Founder & VP of Engineering
• Lantern Lab Society, Executive Director
• Past 5, Founder
• Economy of Wisdom, author (book in progress)
• BCIT, Graduate (with distinction)