Exploring human experience in the age of AI
Think about a difficult decision. AI might help you see more options, understand a tradeoff, or find the words. You still have to decide what matters and what you are prepared to take responsibility for.
AI is becoming
more capable.
What about us?
As AI becomes increasingly capable, how can human beings, potentially with the assistance of AI, become increasingly capable too?
And what does becoming more capable mean for the life we want to live, the people around us, and the things we choose to do ourselves?
This is a growing inquiry into human agency, flourishing, responsibility, and experience in the age of AI. AI may be part of the help. Its growing capabilities also give us reasons to ask these questions again.
More capable toward what?
Being able to do more does not tell us what is worth doing. AI may help us accomplish something while leaving questions about purpose, judgment, care, and responsibility unanswered.
Here, human agency means our capacity to understand, choose, act, and learn while remaining authors of our lives. That matters. So do the relationships, unexpected experiences, struggles, and opportunities we do not entirely choose or control.
The aspiration behind this work is simple:
“Live the life you want and be glad you did.”
It also includes the responsibility to respect the equal dignity, freedom, agency, and opportunity for flourishing of others.
That is what I mean by responsibility here. What it asks of us in practice remains part of the inquiry.
How I arrived here
I am a business person who has cared about important and powerful outcomes for others. I began exploring whether AI could help people become more capable of intentionally creating the lives they choose.
That became the Human Operating System, or HOS: a proposed architecture for helping people understand their circumstances, consider choices, and strengthen their judgment. The intention was to preserve the person’s authority over their own life.
I thought better information would take us a long way. I still believe better information can help. But I have since come to question how far information alone can take us, particularly when it comes to responsibility. People are complicated. I probably should have allowed more room for that at the beginning.
Developing and reviewing HOS opened other questions too. Would it make sense across cultures? How does agency change when we delegate? Could assistance create dependence? Would becoming more capable necessarily mean living more fully?
HOS remains an important starting point. Its design and coherence do not establish that it works. This broader inquiry is a place to examine what it contributes, what needs to change, and what may have been left out.
Where would you
like to begin?
What should we do ourselves?
When does handing something to AI give us more freedom—and when might it cost us understanding, judgment, or a capability we want to keep?
Explore changing agency and AI assistanceWhat makes a life feel well lived?
How do choice, relationships, uncertainty, struggle, joy, and experiences we did not plan contribute to flourishing?
Explore agency and the fullness of human experienceHow does responsibility grow?
What helps us recognize the effects of our choices on other people? What part might information, experience, relationships, reflection, and individual choice play?
Explore responsibility
These are entry points into the ten inquiries currently featured on this website. They are questions to investigate, not findings or fixed boundaries. Further questions are welcome.
See all current inquiriesHow we inquire
We distinguish what we value, what someone has experienced, how we interpret it, what we hypothesize, and what evidence can support. Agreement and a coherent explanation are not enough to establish that an idea is true.
The work so far includes design documents, fictional stories, editorial review, and a developing research framework. Any future claim of benefit will need evidence appropriate to that claim. A working tool, a useful conversation, lasting capability, and a flourishing life are different things to assess.
Sources, uncertainty, criticism, and substantive changes in thinking should remain visible. AI has assisted in developing and reviewing this work; that assistance does not independently establish evidence.
Read how we inquireWork you can examine
The HOS Concise Guide
An accessible introduction to the HOS foundation. Read it alongside the Concept Fidelity Matrix for its coverage and remaining qualifications. The full Second Coherent Edition is available for deeper examination.
Read the Concise GuideTwelve Imagined Human Lives
Fictional stories exploring what HOS might make possible. The “Behind the Story” sections trace the changing ideas behind them. These are imagined possibilities, not accounts of demonstrated outcomes.
Explore the Twelve StoriesThe Research Framework
The working approach for organizing inquiry, identifying the nature of claims, acknowledging sources, and recording what remains uncertain. Retaining an idea for inquiry does not establish its truth.
Explore the Research FrameworkAn invitation
Help us see
what we are missing.
You do not need to agree with the work to contribute. A good criticism, a different interpretation, a relevant source, or a question we have overlooked may help move it forward.
We also welcome interest from people, universities, foundations, and technology organizations who might want to investigate a question or help design a responsible experiment. These are invitations, not announcements of existing partnerships or studies.
Explore ways to participateFollow the development of the work