Who's Still in the Loop?
Trust, Agency, and the Cognitive New Deal
An AI agent completes a task we once considered uniquely human. It makes decisions, coordinates with other systems, and produces work we may no longer fully understand. We gain speed, capability, and new possibilities. But what happens to our judgment, our relationships, and our ability to shape what comes next? Does this alteration actually matters?
Every interaction with AI involves an exchange. We delegate some of our thinking, attention, and decisions in return for greater reach and capability. Yet the terms of that exchange are rarely made explicit. What do we gain? What do we give up? And who gets to decide?
Margaux Pelen (episcope) calls this the Cognitive New Deal: a renegotiation of what we choose to delegate, what we preserve and how we make that exchange work for ourselves and the people with collaborate with. The questions she brings: where does AI expand our thinking, what are the tradeoffs?
Rimma Boshernitsan (DIALOGUE) explores these questions through the frame of co-intelligence and trust: how human, machine, and planetary intelligence can work together, and what becomes of agency, judgment, and accountability as intelligence moves beyond any single individual or system. Her work on productive distrust asks an essential counterquestion: when does questioning a system become as important as trusting it?
Together, these perspectives open a larger inquiry. As AI evolves from a tool we use into systems that increasingly act alongside us, how do we negotiate the relationships, responsibilities, and boundaries that make this new form of collaboration possible?
And perhaps even: What happens when our capacity to delegate grows faster than our capacity to discern?
On Monday, November 2, we invite you to an intimate gathering of people shaping, building, and living with these emerging systems to explore these questions together.
This is not to debate whether AI is good or bad, but rather to examine the choices we are already making, often without realizing it, and the futures those choices may create.
Four questions for the table:
What should we consciously preserve, even when machines can do it for us?
When does trust enable greater agency, and when does distrust become a necessary form of intelligence?
How do we decide how we allocate our cognitive bandwidth, once the systems we build scaffold our thinking beyond what we think was possible?
As decisions and responsibilities become distributed between humans and machines, who remains accountable — and who gets to decide the terms?
The evening draws on the spirit of DIALOGUE and the intimacy of the Tandem dinners: ten people, different perspectives, an off-the-record conversation, and no predetermined answers.
Hosted by Rimma Boshernitsan and Margaux Pelen.
San Francisco · Monday, November 2, 2026 | 6:00pm
10 seats only. The fee covers the cost of the evening.
About the hosts
Rimma Boshernitsan is the founder of DIALOGUE, a research and strategy practice exploring trust, Co-Intelligence, and the futures of human and institutional relationships. Her work brings together systems thinking, strategic foresight, and experiential inquiry to help leaders navigate the changing relationship between human, machine, and planetary intelligence.
Margaux Pelen is the founder of episcope, an AI research and consulting studio exploring the transformation of work and learning. Through her Cognitive New Deal thesis, advisory work, and Tandem dinners, she helps individuals and organizations navigate AI with greater intentionality, agency, and clarity about what they choose to delegate and preserve.