Mindful Makers Hack #15
🧘♀️ Mindful Makers Hack #16 - Human Agency by Design
How might we design AI systems that make people more capable—not more dependent?
As AI becomes embedded in everyday life, we have a responsibility to ensure it strengthens human agency rather than replacing it.
This hack explores how to measure human agency.
We'll be joined by Eduardo Baena, Researcher at the Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems at Northeastern University, who will share his work on human agency and AI evaluation, including:
How can we evaluate whether an AI system makes people more capable instead of creating dependence?
What metrics, benchmarks, experiments, or evaluation frameworks can quantify the quality of human–AI collaboration?
How do we measure improvements in attention, memory, creativity, judgment, curiosity, and independent thinking?
Build tools, interfaces, experiments, or experiences that help people think better with AI instead of gradually outsourcing their thinking. The challenge is not just to build something useful, but to demonstrate that, after using your system, people are more capable—not merely more dependent.
💡 Who Should Join
Meditators, biohackers, wellness enthusiasts: Some experience with meditation is encouraged (occasional dabblers are welcome!), as we will be meditating at the beginning.
Non-coders welcome: You don't need to be a programmer — we'll keep a balanced ratio of coders to non-coders (~1:1) so everyone can contribute meaningfully (laptop required). Just be prepared to learn how to build with AI, and potentially sign up for free trials of AI coding tools.
🌐 See: mindfulmakers.xyz for more details.
🗓️ Schedule
9:45 AM — Breakfast
10:00 – 10:30 AM — Welcome + Overview.
10:30 – 10:45 AM — Group meditation
10:45 – 11:15 AM — Idea brainstorming & tech setup
11:15 AM – 1:30 PM — Make!
1:30 PM — Lunch & Check-in
1:30 – 3:00 PM — Keep making!
4:15 PM – 5:00 PM — Group presentations
📍 MIT, Location available upon RSVP