HumAIn: Being Human in the Age of AI
Launching Fall 2026—A new series of conversations and keynotes, a book club, conferences, and curriculum development opportunities with our Northwestern colleagues.
What is art? What is authorship? What is freedom? How do we preserve autonomy? How do we define consciousness, conscience, judgement, and intelligence? What does it mean to be human? These questions have always formed the foundation of the humanities. While not new, in an age of artificial intelligence and ever-more rapid technological innovation, they take on a different kind of urgency.
The Alice Kaplan Institute’s new initiative, HumAIn: Being Human in the Age of AI, aims to foster dynamic conversations, create intellectual communities, and inspire research and teaching that captures the very human hopes, fears, challenges, and opportunities for people, institutions, and communities beyond the boundaries of the university. Forms of algorithmic technology touch numerous facets of our global society in ways that demand engagement from human-centered perspectives. What possibilities does this technological moment open to reimagine what it means to be human—not only in terms of limits or risks, but also in terms of creativity, responsibility, and collective futures? This initiative examines the broad, societal significance of how AI shapes human experience.
We seek to elevate the human side of technology to draw on the humanities in its most capacious interdisciplinary sense as well as its broader, societal import. Most people encounter “the humanities” not in classrooms or archives but in their daily experiences as they work, play, create, and navigate their individual and collective lives. AI and related forms of technology are increasingly driving renewed attention to critical questions pertaining to ethics, justice, governance, environment, and visions for the future of human thriving.
Closer to home, what are the human dimensions of technological experiences across Northwestern, spanning administration, institutional planning, student life, instruction, research, and public-facing engagement? How are members of the Northwestern community thinking about our own agency and relationship to technology at work? How does our experience of AI shape our perception of being human? What questions do we encounter as we reflect on the rapid changes that shape the numerous ways we all participate in the life of the university?
Stay tuned for event announcements in Fall quarter 2026!