Reflect on what human-centered AI means in your organization

Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally changing how we work. Many tasks that once required a human can now be performed by LLMs, agentic AI or other generative AI. What was impossible even a year ago — like creating an entire game — is now squarely in the realm of possibility.

Of course, artificial intelligence holds plenty of potential. It can automate repetitive tasks, support human decision-making and sidestep human biases. Not surprisingly, businesses see plenty of opportunities to increase productivity and efficiency. Indeed, scientific studies show that AI can deliver on these potentials.

The risks of a technology-focused narrative of AI

This technology-focused narrative on AI tends to frame it as a tool to boost productivity and efficiency. But that is only a partial picture. Our work is also a source of meaning, a way to build social connections and to find purpose by applying our hard-earned skills.

Copilot can easily write code for a developer, but will that developer still derive pride from that work and understand the code as well as if they wrote it? A designer can use ChatGPT to create wireframes for a 3D model. But does that still feel like the kind of creative act that drew this person to become a designer in the first place? And what about the legal expert who can let AI write legal briefs, or the teacher who can simply design class assignments with one prompt?

I italicized can because AI now gives us a choice for many tasks. Do we spend time and effort to do it ourselves, or do we just outsource it to AI to do it for us? Similarly, AI can also be used to monitor, evaluate, manage and even govern how work is performed. The logic of capitalism, with competitors and profit-demanding shareholders, may pressure this decision towards AI even when we do not want it.

We believe it is important for organizations, and the people who work there, to reflect more deeply on how AI changes their work and how this impacts our broader society. Otherwise we may get swept along mindlessly and end up in a place that isn't desirable.

Run a World Café in your organization

To facilitate this reflection, we created a facilitation guide for a 2-hour World Café that you can run in your organization as part of the Reflexive AI Initiative. It is designed to deeply engage everyone in important questions, such as:

• What should human-centered AI look like in your organization? What results or outcomes would you see? What do you hear people say or ask regarding AI?
• Under what conditions has AI been used in your organization in a manner that supported people?
• What are examples in your organization where the use of AI was not human-centered, or where could you see it easily sliding down that path?
• What could be measured, tracked or audited to ensure that the way your organization uses AI is human-centered?

The World Café closes by translating those insights into immediate action and provides a good starting point for further discussion. The guide was reviewed by twelve professionals and academics.

Contribute to the Reflexive AI Research Initiative

By running the World Café in your organization, you can contribute to the Reflexive AI Research Initiative initiated by me, Prof Karen Eilers, Barry Overeem and Prof Daniel Russo. This action research initiative is a broad collaboration between professionals and scientists and aims to answer the research question: "How can organizations leverage the power of artificial intelligence in a manner that is human-centered? What principles, rules, norms, interventions, processes and strategies are needed to achieve this? How can this be monitored?" The initiative is overseen by a peer review board of 10 professionals and academics.

By sharing the anonymized outcomes of the World Café with the initiative, we can include your insights to develop better guidance for organizations and address the broad societal challenge of AI. Sharing of data is highly recommended, but you can also run the World Café without it.

If you will be sharing the outcomes, please contact us at research@lucidinstitute.org beforehand.

Conclusion

In this post, we offer a facilitation guide to run a World Café in your organization about human-centered AI. How does AI impact your work? Where did it help and where did it not? And what can be done to ensure AI is used in a manner that supports people?

Note on AI usage

This post was written by a human. Claude was used exclusively for spell- and grammar checks.

Attribution

The guide was created and reviewed by Barry Overeem, Prof. Dr. Karen Eilers, Prof. Dr. Daniel Russo, myself, Melanie Schäfer, Astrid Claessen, Robert Huberts, Vivian Boumans, Jennifer Trinks, Jutta Eckstein as part of the Reflexive AI Initiative