Two week’s back I was at the HCI Symposium on the “Future of Being Human,” graciously invited by Prof. Elizabeth Churchill at MBZUAI. It was a unique time that week in the UAE as this event in Abu Dhabi followed a couple of days in Dubai at the Dubai Future Forum. These two remarkable events — back to back — felt like coming home in a way. To be amongst a group of positive, aspiration, engaged and thoughtful people felt like I was stepping into a small space where possibility was felt before cynacism and antagonism.

In Abu Dhabi at the HCI Symposium, researchers, artists, designers, policy folks and academics arrived from around the world, each carrying a different piece of the future, but all with a shared ambition to wonder and wander into those futures together. I found myself more than content to sit, talk, listen, jot thoughts and sketches in a notebook (and leave my laptop behind at the hotel) and just be present to the experience.

Over two days we explored themes of AI and agency, embodiment and identity, ethics and values, and the role of design in shaping what it means to be human in a world increasingly mediated by technology. There were presentations on cutting-edge research, provocative keynotes that ranged from formal research to artistic explorations, and lively panel discussions that challenged our assumptions and sparked new ideas.

What made the experience remarkable wasn’t just the diversity of disciplines. That brought a kind of spirit of co-creation. Marta Rey Babarro, PhD took on the task of facilitating the workshop component — where we used the conceit of creating a book under the rubric of “The Future of Being Human” in an AI-saturated world. And this became a way to conduct a kind of shared experiment in imagining what comes next through active group discussions and share-outs. I have to say — the MBZUAI team created a structure that held all of this beautifully. A model to be emulated both in terms of the on-the-ground activities, as well as the simple task of bringing together a range of perspectives and approaches.

I’ll also say that an enviable aspect of the event was the amazing hospitality and curation of experiences that the MBZUAI team provided. From the welcoming to all of the incredible food, to the visits to the desert and the Teamlab exhibition — it was all what a coming-together of minds and hearts should be. Not just sitting in a room — but having time to connect, talk, play, and just be together.

Aside from the wonderful and thought-provoking keynotes and panels, there was the workshop component that nudged our little assembly out of the trad academic frame. Our task was to collectively write a book, which to some might be taken literally, but I took it more as a prompt — a way to reflect on the questions surrounding the symposium rather than literally write a book.

Instead of writing about the future, my group wrote from inside a future. We conceptually sketched the beginnings of a slim, practical training guide titled “How to Train Your Agent” — a future field manual for a world where everyone has a small constellation of personal AI agents that must learn our habits, moods, quirks, skills, desires and aspirations. Part pet-keeping, part etiquette, part speculative anthropology. It felt wonderfully design-fiction-y: using an artifact to materialize the adjacent possible long enough for us to ask better questions.

And then there are the moments that don’t fit neatly into an agenda. Over lunch I met the wonderful Simon Pulman-Jones, who turned out — entirely by coincidence — to be a huge fan of OMATA, my very analog-digital cycling computer company from a past chapter of my life. We slipped immediately into a conversation about cycling, hardware, stubbornness, and the foolhardy joy of building physical things in a world where everyone warns you: don’t do hardware, it’s too hard.

That collision of worlds reminded me why gatherings like this matter. When you put diverse experiences — HCI researchers, musicians, designers, engineers, scientists, cyclists, hardware founders — in the same room, you surface possibilities you wouldn’t find by staying in your lane. The “future of being human” is less a single domain than a conversation across many of them.

I left feeling energized by how expansive the field is becoming, and how essential it is that we approach AI not only as a technical project, but as a deeply human one.