In this personal essay, I share reflections on an upcoming trip to Mongolia and my work with the Jeweled Horse Foundation. As AI becomes more deeply embedded in our lives, I raise a question I fear is being overlooked: what happens to the kinds of knowledge that can’t be digitized? And what do we lose if we let that knowledge disappear? I hope it sparks reflection on how we, as a global society, value different kinds of knowledge.

This coming September, I’ll be joining a group of around 20 people, traveling to the Altai Mountains in western Mongolia. We’ll be staying with Kazakh nomads, joining them for an eagle-hunting festival and a multi-day horse trek. I’ll sleep in a ger (a traditional Mongolian yurt), at a campsite with a single portable toilet and one makeshift shower for the entire group.

For 13 nights, in this remote corner of the world, we’ll have no electricity, no running water, no cell phone service.

I couldn’t be more excited.

There are two reasons I keep getting pulled back to Mongolia. The first is personal: it’s a connection to the culture of some of my ancestors. The second is harder to articulate, but it’s something I feel more intensely with every passing year: the faster technological advances push Western society forward, the more I want to balance it by stepping back. Back into places where people live in harmony with the land, in ways that have remained largely unchanged for thousands of years.

I recently attended the annual board meeting of the Jeweled Horse Foundation, where I serve as Board Secretary. One of our goals is to help preserve the nomadic way of life in Mongolia. Plenty of nonprofits serve Mongolians, but many are missionary organizations that seek to also spread Christianity. Our mission is different. We believe in supporting nomadic life without trying to convert or change the culture.

During that meeting, I found myself thinking about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. We’re living through an incredible moment where AI is making collective human knowledge widely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Anyone, anywhere, can learn almost anything. If you believe knowledge is power and that education is the greatest equalizer, this is an extraordinary time to be alive. It matters less and less where you’re born or how privileged you are. If you have the desire to learn, AI is making it easier and more accessible than ever before.

But I keep coming back to a nagging question: what about all the world’s knowledge we can’t digitize?

Mongolian nomads live in close relationship with their animals, drawing sustenance from milk, meat, and hide. They make cheeses, yogurts, and fermented drinks. They produce wool, felt, and textiles. They use humane slaughter techniques and know how to utilize the whole animal, wasting nothing. Their entire way of life — from basic nutrition and survival to transportation and leisure — is built around the close relationship they’ve built with five traditional herding animals: goats, sheep, camels, horses, and yaks.

Their deep, specialized knowledge isn’t taught in schools or written down in college textbooks. It’s passed directly from father to son, mother to daughter, generation to generation.

I’m reminded of a passage from the introduction to a book of Mongolian folktales that talks about the tradition of oral storytelling and touches on this same idea:

“…assumed by people who call themselves ‘civilized’ […], that because most of the Mongols were illiterate, they were also ignorant, and because they were ignorant, they were also stupid. But being unable to read is not the same thing as being ignorant, and a man who is ignorant is not necessarily a stupid man. […] [the Mongols] had a wide range of knowledge, especially knowledge of nature, knowledge of human nature, and knowledge, most important of all, of the nature of society.” — Owen Lattimore

This kind of wisdom risks being erased, not by malice, but by omission. It’s invisible to our modern technology systems that are cataloging and organizing digital information. Nomadic wisdom can’t be scraped, digitized, or fed into a large language model (the kinds of AI systems behind tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity).

When it comes to this wisdom the nomads have, you have to live it to learn it.

I’m generally optimistic about the future of AI. I believe it has the potential to bring abundance and expand access to knowledge in powerful ways. But I also worry about what gets left behind. Doesn’t it already feel like the world is becoming more homogenous? Have you noticed how similar certain major cities around the world start to feel, with the same global brands, stores, and restaurant chains?

As AI accelerates this flattening effect, it is even more urgent to preserve distinct cultures. With loss of cultural and tribal knowledge, we lose more than just a lifestyle — we lose insight into different ways of being human.

The people building our AI systems probably aren’t thinking about nomads in the Altai Mountains. I wouldn’t have either, if I hadn’t spent time with Mongolian nomads six years ago. That experience gave me a deep appreciation for a people whose culture is so different from my day-to-day life. I saw their incredible talents firsthand — especially their horsemanship, but also the way they milk animals and make dairy products from scratch, every day. I saw how hard they work, how beautifully untouched the land is, and how much of their life is built around care, skill, and connection to nature. It made me fall in love with a place and a people whose way of life deserves to be preserved.

My fear is that if we lose these ancient ways of life, we’ll also lose essential wisdom that even the most sophisticated AI could never replicate.

I look forward to sharing my experience visiting Mongolia this September and continuing to support the Jeweled Horse Foundation.

Before you go, here are a few questions to consider:

• Can you think of other kinds of knowledge that can’t be digitized?

• What happens if we lose them?

• What ancient wisdom did your ancestors have, and how was it passed along?

• Who decides which knowledge is worth preserving?

• Can AI help protect culture, or does it risk erasing it?

• What role can each of us play in keeping different ways of life alive?

Support The Jeweled Horse Foundation: https://jeweledhorse.org/donate

Get in touch with me: X or Farcaster