This half-day workshop invites participants to explore how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be designed and researched in ways that recognise and support personhood. Building on HCI’s engagement with identity, values, and lived experience, the workshop positions personhood as a central consideration for the future of AI research and design.
Attendees will collectively examine the ethical, methodological, and design challenges that emerge when AI systems are introduced into socially complex contexts involving care, identity, autonomy, relationships, and lived experience. The workshop will encourage attendees to move beyond technical framings of AI and instead consider how intelligent systems may support, simplify, or disrupt evolving experiences of being a person.
Through participatory vignette discussions, creative mapping activities, and collaborative agenda building, attendees will explore personhood from both an inward-facing perspective (our own sense of self, identity, and continuity) and an outward-facing perspective (our role in recognising, supporting, and contributing to the personhood of others). Particular attention will be given to relational and reciprocal understandings of personhood and how these may inform future AI systems. The workshop will finish with the co-production of a future research agenda, identifying key ethical questions, methodological challenges, and design opportunities for AI and personhood research within HCI.
Arrival and Welcome (10 mins)
Informal welcome with tea/coffee, identifying housekeeping, such as establishing values of the day collaboratively for respectful and safe participation, ensuring that all people all have ownership of their workshop space.
Introduction (20 mins)
We will begin with an introduction to personhood, identity, and AI within HCI, alongside a short icebreaker activity using strength cards.
Activity One - Vignette Discussions (60 mins)
Together, we'll explore attendee-submitted and organiser-provided vignettes using a layered annotation activity with transparent acetate sheets. Each layer introduces a different perspective, encouraging discussion around ethics, relationships, AI, and future design. As the layers build, so do the conversations, helping us uncover different ways of understanding personhood and identify ideas to take into the next activity.
Break (15 mins)
Activity Two - Mapping Personhood (40 mins)
Together, we'll use a range of materials to creatively map different aspects of personhood, exploring how identity, relationships, care, and lived experiences connect. We'll then consider where AI might support, influence, or challenge these experiences, encouraging speculative thinking about how future AI systems can better recognise the complexity and fluidity of personhood.
Activity Three - Agenda Building (30 mins)
Together, we'll reflect on the ideas generated throughout the workshop and identify future research questions, ethical considerations, and design opportunities for AI and personhood within HCI. This final discussion will help us co-create a shared agenda for future research and collaboration.
Closing Discussion (5 mins)
Identifying opportunities for future collaborations and continued discussion.
PhD student at Northumbria University
Professor of Craft and Wellbeing at Northumbria University
Associate Professor of Informatics and Artificial Intelligence
Associate Professor at the School of Science at the University of Lisbon
Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University
Associate Professor at
Indiana University
Research Fellow at City St George’s, University of London
Principle Researcher in Human-Centred AI at Microsoft Research Cambridge
Brunel University of London
Campus, Kingston Ln, Uxbridge UB8 3PH
The event room and time will be announced soon!