Being. Creative. Together. Designing Technologies That Center Human Connection, Co-creativity, and Calm in the Era of AI

Abstract

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly interwoven into our creative, social, and learning experiences, we must ask: Will these technologies deepen our connection to the timeless human experiences of Being, Being Together, and Being Creative Together—or will they pull us apart, leaving us more anxious and isolated? In an era where AI systems are increasingly framed as our “co-creators” and “companions,” enabling hyper-personalized yet hyper-isolated interactions, this dissertation reclaims the prefix ‘co-’ as fundamentally interhuman—introducing a set of new paradigms that center human connection, co-creativity, and calm in the design of technologies.

Central to this work, we’ve developed CoCo (coco.build), a general-purpose, real-time co-creative learning platform that empowers young people to engage in a wide variety of safe, shared creative experiences with their peers—spanning creative computing, AI education, digital art, writing, and more. Through the platform, we showcase how digital environments can move beyond isolated modes of learning and creating to support multiple ways of being creative together with others—introducing a new paradigm for real-time digital collaboration. We further illuminate how CoCo has been envisioned as a “self-less” social platform that de-emphasizes comparison-based, self-centric metrics (profiles, likes, followers) prevalent in most online systems for young people.

We weave these interconnected ideas into the unifying theme of “Being. Creative. Together.”— values we believe are both timeless and especially timely in the AI era. We supplement the broader design, technical, practical, and pedagogical contributions of this work by sharing insights and feedback from pilots with over 2,000 young people and educators across diverse settings. Ultimately, we see this dissertation as both a contribution and a call—to preserve the human essence of co-, to distinguish it from the useful, powerful, but instrumental AI interactions, and to shape digital environments that nurture our capacity to co-imagine, co-create, co-learn, co-exist, and co-evolve—with and through one another.

Note: This work has been co-developed with Shruti Dhariwal. See https://coco.build/thesis for suggested citation and updates on this work.