Science Fiction Prototyping: Human-AI Futures

Description

Conversational agents are increasingly evolving from purely functional tools toward affective systems that engage users in socially meaningful ways. So-called AI companions – in the form of chatbots, voice assistants, virtual avatars, or social robots – are beginning to play sustained roles in contexts such as learning, wellbeing, and digital health. These developments raise important research questions: How do people imagine interacting with such systems? What kinds of relationships emerge, and how do they affect human identity and autonomy? Which guardrails and governance mechanisms are considered necessary?

This two-day scientific exchange addresses these questions by applying Science Fiction Prototyping as a structured, narrative, participatory scenario technique. The event brings together Japanese and Swiss researchers who have already implemented SF Prototyping in different formats and contexts and who now seek to exchange and further develop their respective approaches with the shared objective of shaping human–AI interaction in a responsible and socially sustainable manner. The goals of this event are, on the one hand, to enable methodological exchange and, on the other hand, to refine research questions and collaboration structures in preparation for a planned joint or coordinated Swiss–Japanese research proposal on culturally sensitive multi-agent AI companion systems.

The two-day format combines a student–scientist workshop with an interdisciplinary researcher workshop, allowing for both creative exploration and structured scientific reflection. The specific aims are:

1. to transfer and adapt the established Japanese SciFi Prototyping format within the Swiss research community through joint facilitation;
2. to conduct a workshop with senior high school students and participating scientists in order to capture young people’s perspectives on future AI companionship and multi-agent interaction;
3. to conduct an interdisciplinary researcher workshop to co-create and comparatively analyse future visions of human–AI interaction; and
4. to strengthen and further develop the emerging Swiss–Japanese collaboration.

Methodologically, the event uses structured workshop phases in which participants collaboratively create speculative future scenarios, including new forms of language, devices, interactions, and narratives. The scenarios are documented using a dedicated web application contributed by the Japanese research team and are subsequently analysed in structured reflection and synthesis sessions to identify recurring themes, relational patterns, and preliminary design criteria and governance considerations for multi-agent AI companion systems.

The event is expected to result in a jointly elaborated research design and concrete work plan for a coordinated Swiss–Japanese research proposal, a consolidated set of preliminary design criteria and governance considerations for multi-agent AI companion systems derived from the workshop scenarios, and a co-authored academic publication documenting both the methodological adaptation of Science Fiction Prototyping in this event setting and the substantive findings related to future human–AI interaction. Japanese researchers benefit from applying and further refining their established scenario-based methodology in a Swiss context, whereas Swiss researchers benefit from an interdisciplinary framework in which to discuss shared research challenges and position themselves for joint research activities.

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