What does RAISE-UP mean by human flourishing
When you can pay your rent and put food on the table, when you can see a doctor without going broke, when your work feels meaningful, when your children are learning and growing, when your relationships are strong — that is human flourishing.
That is the abundant life Silicon Valley is promising. And after generations of our country investing in education and innovation, AI could finally make it possible for everyone.
But only if we choose to build it that way.
That is exactly why we must redirect what we ask of AI — and rebuild our economy to deliver what it has always owed us.
The Framework for Human Flourishing
RAISE-UP refers to Harvard's Framework for Human Flourishing for a more academic definition of flourishing.
“A state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good, including the contexts in which that person lives.”
- VanderWeele, T.J. (2017). On the promotion of human flourishing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 31:8148-8156.
RAISE-UP believes it's framework directly aligns with RAISE-UP's vision of a people-centered AI economy, combining the six domains of flourishing with the moral and economic goals:
Domain 1. Happiness and Life Satisfaction
Harvard defines this domain as living with contentment, joy, and a sense of fulfillment. RAISE-UP recognizes that economic insecurity, job loss, and unaffordable essentials erode happiness for millions. By redirecting AI to create good jobs and lower the costs of housing, healthcare, and education, RAISE-UP supports conditions where people can build stable, satisfying lives rather than live in fear of technological displacement.
Domain 2. Mental and Physical Health
Harvard emphasizes the inseparable link between physical well-being, mental health, and a flourishing life. RAISE-UP promotes using AI for healing, not harm, accelerating medical breakthroughs, improving access to care, and reducing burnout through fair workloads and supportive tools for workers. In a people-centered AI world, technology would strengthen, not stress, the human body and spirit.
Domain 3. Meaning and Purpose
A flourishing life requires feeling that one’s work and existence contribute to something larger than oneself. RAISE-UP calls for an AI economy that augments human purpose, where workers use intelligent tools to create, teach, build, and serve rather than be replaced by algorithms. Work becomes not a casualty of progress but a renewed channel for meaning, creativity, and service to others.
Domain 4. Character and Virtue
Harvard includes integrity, gratitude, generosity, and perseverance as hallmarks of flourishing. RAISE-UP frames AI ethics around these same virtues: transparency, fairness, compassion, and shared responsibility. In an age of powerful technology, human virtue becomes the compass, ensuring innovation is guided by conscience, not just computation.
Domain 5. Close Social Relationships
Flourishing requires love, trust, and community. AI should strengthen these ties, not fragment them. Through partnerships with faith-based, civic, and educational organizations, RAISE-UP seeks to rebuild community dialogue about the role of technology in society. The RAISE-UP Pledge itself is a moral act of relationship—committing to love one another enough to choose a shared, humane future.
Domain 6. Material and Financial Stability
Sustaining flourishing requires a foundation of economic security. RAISE-UP directly addresses this by advocating an economy where productivity gains from AI benefit everyone, not only shareholders. By reinvesting those gains into universal opportunity and affordability, society fulfills the justice side of flourishing: the chance for every person to thrive materially as well as spiritually.
Conclusion
From Harvard’s perspective, flourishing is the condition in which every dimension of life, material, relational, moral, and spiritual, is good. RAISE-UP’s mission is to make that possible in the age of artificial intelligence: to ensure that progress serves people, prosperity is shared, and technology becomes an instrument of abundant life rather than anxiety and exclusion.