NeurIPS 2026 Workshop

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AI and the Self

Human Identity, Authenticity, and Agency in the Age of AI

AI and the Self brings together technical, empirical, social, cultural, and philosophical work on how AI systems mediate identity, agency, self-understanding, dependence, and human flourishing.

Date December 12, 2026 08:30–18:30 (GMT +1)

Venue Paris, France Palais des Congrès de Paris

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About

Workshop overview

AI systems are no longer only external tools. They are increasingly becoming interlocutors, cognitive extensions, mirrors, collaborators, and social actors that shape how people think, decide, remember, and understand themselves.

This workshop asks how AI systems construct, extend, support, or destabilize the self, and what kinds of computational, empirical, and interdisciplinary methods are needed to study those effects rigorously.

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One central aim is to move these questions closer to machine learning practice: how to measure shifts in self-concept, dependence, confidence, preference formation, and memory under repeated AI interaction; how to design personalization, memory, uncertainty, and refusal in ways that support reflection rather than over-reliance; and how to study cultural and linguistic assumptions about the self inside AI systems.

The workshop also looks at how AI changes learning, authorship, creativity, professional identity, and the meaning of human competence when systems act as tutors, collaborators, co-authors, or social companions. It builds on the earlier interdisciplinary workshop in Bonn and translates that conversation into a NeurIPS-facing research agenda.

Confirmed speakers

Markus Gabriel

Markus Gabriel

University of Bonn

Professor at the University of Bonn and director of the Center for Science and Thought, working on philosophy of mind, selfhood, agency, and ethical questions around AI.

Homepage ↗ Philosophy of mind Selfhood & agency AI ethics

Anders Søgaard

Anders Søgaard

University of Copenhagen

Professor of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen. He is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and has published more than 350 scientific papers and eight books. He was awarded an ERC Starting Grant, a Google Focused Research Award, and a Carlsberg Semper Ardens Advance.

Homepage ↗ NLP & LLMs Trust & fairness Language & culture

Munmun De Choudhury

Munmun De Choudhury

Georgia Tech

Professor at the School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech, working in computational social science on reasoning about personal and societal well-being from social digital footprints.

Homepage ↗ Social media & well-being Digital mental health Human-centered AI

Advait Sarkar

Advait Sarkar

Microsoft Research · University of Cambridge

Researcher at Microsoft and affiliated lecturer at Cambridge, studying human–AI interaction and how generative AI affects cognition, critical thinking, and knowledge work.

Homepage ↗ Human–AI interaction Metacognition Critical thinking

Mariya Toneva

Mariya Toneva

Max Planck Institute for Software Systems

Faculty member at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, where she leads the Bridging AI and Neuroscience (BrAIN) group. Her research bridges natural language processing, machine learning, and cognitive neuroscience to develop computational models that deepen our understanding of how the brain processes language and guide the creation of more human-aligned AI systems. Her pioneering work at this intersection has been recognized and supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the German Research Foundation (DFG), and the European Research Council through an ERC Starting Grant.

Homepage ↗ AI & neuroscience Language in the brain Brain–AI alignment