Meaning
How can people preserve a sense of purpose when AI changes the work through which they once experienced identity and value?
THE EXISTENTIAL HUMAN-CENTRED AI FORUM
Meaning After Work
Leadership, Management and Meaningful Work in the Age of Intelligent Systems
A public research-and-practice initiative exploring how humans, leaders and organizations can preserve meaning, agency, responsibility and relational life in the age of artificial intelligence.
Start here
New to Meaning After Work?
Meaning After Work explores what happens to human meaning, agency, responsibility and relational life when artificial intelligence begins to transform work.
01
Read the core question
Start with the manifesto and the question of what remains meaningful when work can no longer carry identity, dignity and purpose in the same way.
02Try The Human Threshold
Play a short reflective challenge about staying human under pressure. It is the quickest way to feel the project rather than only read about it.
03Read the founding essay
Explore how existential management, Camus, meaningful work and AI connect in the public essay series.
04Explore the EHCAI foundation
Go deeper into the research framework behind existential human-centred AI, co-being and responsible organizational life.
Who this is for
For people who sense that efficiency is not enough
Researchers and educators
For those working on AI, meaningful work, existential management, humanistic management, ethics, organization studies and the future of work.
Leaders and managers
For people facing AI adoption who want to preserve judgment, responsibility, dignity and relational life inside organizations.
Workers and professionals
For anyone who feels the tension between productivity, usefulness, identity, care and the need to remain human under pressure.
Reflective practitioners
For facilitators, coaches, consultants and public thinkers looking for careful ways to open conversations about AI, work and meaning.
Reflective Experiences
Small games for serious reflection
Meaning After Work includes experimental reflective games that translate questions of AI, work, agency, responsibility and co-being into short interactive experiences.
Reflective game
The Human Threshold
A short competitive challenge about staying human under pressure. Preserve meaning, agency, responsibility and co-being while pressure rises.
Play the challenge → Experience hubExplore all prototypes
Try Sisyphus Deck, Carrying the Stone, Contradiction Labyrinth, Meaning Blocks and the private Contradiction Diary.
Open the hub → Pattern gameMeaning Blocks
Arrange falling demands into a fragile life pattern and notice what happens when AI, work, care, rest and responsibility cluster.
Arrange the blocks →Public talks
Free public talks on AI, work and meaning
Selected educational and public-interest talks are available without a speaking fee for universities, schools, libraries, public institutions, non-profit organizations and educational events.
Topics include Meaning After Work, existential management and leadership, burnout and personal crisis from an existential perspective, human-centred AI, soft skills in the AI age and co-being.
Why this matters
AI is changing not only what we do, but why work matters.
Work has long been one of the main places where people search for identity, dignity, recognition and meaning. We often understand ourselves through what we do, how we contribute, and whether our work is valued by others.
Artificial intelligence and automated systems are beginning to unsettle this arrangement. They do not only automate tasks. They challenge the role that work has played in human life.
The central question is not only whether humans will remain useful. It is whether we will still know how to be present – to ourselves, to others, and to the meanings that make life worth living.
The core question
How can humans remain meaningful, responsible and relational in the age of intelligent systems?
Agency
How can humans remain capable of judgment, authorship and responsibility when intelligent systems increasingly support or replace decision-making?
Co-being
How can we recover the relational practices of presence, dialogue, care and repair in a world increasingly organized around speed, productivity and automation?
Research foundation
The Existential Human-Centred AI Forum
The Existential Human-Centred AI Forum is a research-and-practice initiative exploring the existential, ethical and organizational consequences of artificial intelligence. It builds on work in existential philosophy, humanistic management, social entrepreneurship, meaningful work, leadership and generative AI in knowledge work.
While many AI ethics initiatives ask how to make AI responsible, this initiative asks how humans, leaders and organizations can remain responsible, meaningful and relational in the AI age.
Public reflection
Contradiction Diary
The Contradiction Diary is a reflective tool for noticing the tensions people live with in AI-mediated work and life: efficiency and dependency, creativity and skill erosion, productivity and meaning, responsibility and exhaustion.
The first version is private and browser-based. It does not store or send your responses. A future EUSurvey form may allow participants to voluntarily contribute anonymized experiences for research, with information and consent provided before submission.
Some contradictions are not problems to be solved quickly. They are human situations to be inhabited responsibly.
Future practice
From research to reflection, learning and organizational dialogue.
The initiative is currently in a pre-launch stage. We are exploring possible future non-commercial and practice-oriented formats, including meaning-centred AI literacy, contradiction workshops and reflective tools for organizations.
These ideas are under development and are not currently offered as commercial services.