Simpósio de IA
AI as Infrastructure for the Support of Compassion and a Better Life
A free, live gathering with leading voices in AI, ethics, science, and compassion
November 4 · 11am-1pm PT · Online · Free
JOIN US FOR AN EXPLORATION OF HOW AI CAN SUPPORT HUMAN FLOURISHING
AI is rapidly changing how we live, work, learn, and connect.
The choices we make now will help determine whether it deepens division— or supports compassion, fairness, dignity, and collective wellbeing.
Join us for a free, accessible symposium exploring how we can guide AI toward a more humane future.
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Why This Matters Now
AI is already influencing the information we receive, the decisions institutions make, how we learn, and how we relate to one another. Its development is moving quickly, and many of us are asking what it will mean for our relationships, communities, work, and society.
How can AI strengthen what is best in us?
Myriam Mongrain, PhD
Chair, Science Committee, Global Compassion Coalition
Symposium Host
As Chair of the Global Compassion Coalition’s Science Committee, Dr. Myriam Mongrain has played a key role in shaping the symposium and bringing together its speakers. A clinical psychologist and Full Professor of Psychology at York University, Myriam is an active clinician, researcher and teacher whose work examines positive psychology interventions to boost resilience and promote well-being.
Panel 1 - What Is Being Done Now to Align AI in a Prosocial Direction?
Our first conversation will look at what’s happening now. How are researchers and practitioners working to ensure that increasingly capable AI systems serve human and societal wellbeing? What does it mean to build values such as compassion, fairness, dignity and human agency into AI? And what challenges emerge when we try? The panel will explore current approaches to AI design, training, evaluation and governance, and consider both the possibilities and limitations of aligning increasingly powerful technology with human values.
Sessei Meg McNeil
Tassajara Zen Mountain Center
LinkedIn
Sessei Meg McNeil has practiced Soto Zen for over 30 years and currently serves as Head of Practice at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the monastic branch of the San Francisco Zen Center. Alongside her Zen training, she helped develop the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which grew out of the mindfulness-based emotional intelligence and leadership program created at Google, and has worked extensively in the intersection of tech and Buddhist-inspired practices.
Rafael Calvo, PhD
Imperial College London
Rafael A. Calvo, PhD is Chair of Design Engineering and Director of the Wellbeing Technologies Lab at Imperial College London's Dyson School of Design Engineering. A former ARC Fellow at the University of Sydney, he has published 3 books and over 250 papers (citations: 23,000; h-index: 73). His research focuses on intelligent systems for wellbeing, health, and learning, combining NLP, affective computing, VR, and human-centred design. Notable projects include mental health platforms, apps for asthma and conversational agents for dementia. His work has attracted over $10M in funding and improved lives across diverse populations.
Jane Compson, PhD
Universidade de Washington
Jane Compson, PhD, is Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Tacoma, where she teaches religious studies and philosophy. Her research explores contemplative practices and Buddhist thought in contemporary secular contexts, including artificial intelligence ethics, medical ethics, and education. She is a trained teacher of Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and a Buddhist chaplain with lay ordination from the Zen Peacemaker Order. Jane is also a Research Fellow with AI and Faith, bringing the wisdom of faith traditions to conversations around AI ethics, and is currently writing a book on Buddhism and AI.
Mark Graves, PhD
AI & Faith
Mark Graves, PhD, is Research Director at AI and Faith and Research Associate Professor of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. His research explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, ethics, and theology. He holds a PhD in computer science specializing in artificial intelligence and an MA in systematic and philosophical theology, with additional fellowships spanning genomics, moral psychology, and moral theology. Alongside his academic work, Mark brings 15 years of experience developing AI and data solutions across the biotech, pharmaceutical, and healthcare industries. He has held teaching or research positions at eight institutions and authored more than ninety technical and scholarly publications, including three books.
Max Lamparth, PhD
Universidade de Stanford
Max Lamparth, PhD, is a Research Fellow at Stanford University with the Hoover Institution’s Technology Policy Accelerator, the Stanford Intelligence Systems Laboratory, and the Stanford Center for AI Safety. His research develops methods to ensure AI models learn desirable behavior from human input and that they learn goals robust to exploitation. Prior to his current appointment, Max was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and received his Ph.D. from the Technical University of Munich.
Panel 2 - What Can We Do Collectively to Nudge the Evolution of AI in Prosocial Ways?
Our second panel will explore what we can do collectively to encourage the development of AI in more prosocial directions. What roles can researchers, technologists, educators, policymakers, civil-society organisations and citizens play? Where are the opportunities for cooperation and collective action? And how might we move from responding to technological change to participating more deliberately in shaping it? Together, we’ll explore practical and imaginative possibilities for helping AI evolve in ways that strengthen cooperation, collective wisdom and human flourishing.
Paul Atkins, PhD
Mundo Pró-Social
Paul Atkins, PhD, is an author, researcher and facilitator trainer whose research focuses on enhancing compassion, wellbeing, perspective-taking, and cooperation in groups and organisations. He co-founded ProSocial World, a not-for-profit strengthening cooperation and trust in purpose-driven groups globally, and has applied ACT and ProSocial in settings as diverse as private companies, political parties, schools, and the United Nations. A former President of the ANZ Association for Contextual Behavioral Science and a Fellow of the international ACBS, Paul now writes on AI alignment, exploring how technology can strengthen rather than erode human wisdom and cooperation. He lives in Sydney, Australia.
Adam Elwood, PhD
Aily Labs
Adam Elwood, PhD is Director of GenAI at Aily Labs, where he leads a team building agentic decision-intelligence systems for Fortune 500 companies. He holds a PhD in Physics from Imperial College London, where his research was based at CERN. His current work bridges enterprise AI and alignment research: he is a co-author of "Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human Flourishing" (with collaborators from DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic), and collaborates on contemplative AI benchmarking. A longtime meditation practitioner, Adam writes about consciousness and value on his Substack, Pursuing Reality.
Ruben Laukkonen, PhD
Universidade de Oxford
Ruben Laukkonen, PhD is a senior neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Flourishing Intelligence Program (FLIP) and co-directs the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing. Ruben has made significant theoretical and empirical contributions to the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness, meditation, and insight. His work also reveals a pathway towards better and safer artificial intelligence based on the science of consciousness and contemplative wisdom. His work has been featured widely, including The New York Times, TIME, Scientific American, TEDx, Vice, ABC, Aeon, VOX, New Scientist, and in the Nature collection.
Stacey Lawson
Positive AI Labs
Stacey Lawson works at the intersection of AI, social impact, sustainability, and transformative leadership. She is Co-founder of Positive AI Labs, focused on Wisdom + AI, and the Benevolent AI Future coalition, bringing together builders and funders of AI solutions serving the public good. She recently co-chaired ISL.ai with Sir Richard Branson, an AI Summit on Necker Island for leading AI founders and CEOs, and advises several AI startups. Previously, Stacey co-founded and led Ygrene Energy Fund and co-founded UC Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. A longtime practitioner and teacher of inner transformation, she facilitates explorations of conscious business, group coherence, self-realization, and awakening practices.
Roma Patel
Deepmind
Roma Patel is a Research Scientist at Deepmind, where her research focuses on safety, alignment and understanding of language models. She has also done work on grounded language learning and robotics focused on building agents that exhibit human-level intelligence to cooperatively solve tasks by using insights from the study of language. Given the interdisciplinary nature of this research agenda, Roma’s research spans the fields of natural language processing, robotics, multi-agent reinforcement learning and cognitive science. Her work has been published at top-tier conferences such as ICLR, ICML, RSS, ACL, EMNLP and others.
This Symposium Is for You If...
You’re curious about AI and what its rapid development means for human life and the kind of society we want to create.
Whether you work in technology, research, education, policy, philanthropy, or civil society, or simply want to better understand AI’s impact on our shared future, you are warmly invited to join us.
No technical background is required, only curiosity and care for the future we are creating together.
O que você aprenderá
What’s happening now
How AI is being aligned with prosocial values.
The opportunities and challenges
Bringing human values into AI development and governance.
How we can shape its direction
The role people and organisations can play.
A more compassionate future
Practical possibilities that support human flourishing.
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