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Reflexive AI: Join our action research initiative on human-centered AI

Christiaan Verwijs

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Reflexive AI: Join our action research initiative on human-centered AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay. Many companies are at different stages of their exploratory journey into what AI can offer them. While research shows it can increase productivity and efficiency, it is also clear that it can harm trust, break motivation and increase exit intentions (Sadeghi, 2025; Ateeq et al., 2025; Tavantzis et al., 2025). Given how fast this technology is developing, and the societal impact it is already having, it is important for organizations to develop strong governance structures. How can artificial intelligence be leveraged effectively without the human and environmental cost? What procedures, guidelines, rules, strategies, and interventions need to be in place? What questions should be asked and answered?

An action research initiative

Starting in September 2026, we are collaborating with the non-profit Lucid Institute (LIOS) to bring together researchers, academics and practitioners to develop such a framework for governance. The project is coordinated on a voluntary, unpaid basis by Christiaan Verwijs, Prof Karen Eilers, Barry Overeem and Prof Daniel Russo, and overseen by a peer review board of eight volunteering members. The coordination team and peer-review board (more members will be joining).

The coordination team and peer-review board (more members will be joining)

Although some frameworks have already been developed by scientists, this is the first large-scale attempt to do so directly with professionals and practitioners. Such a collaborative approach is essential given the societal impact of AI. Our core approach is action research, a research methodology where researchers and professionals develop knowledge together through iteratively testing ideas and solutions in practice.

To achieve this, we will form several work groups that meet several times over a period of some months to iteratively and collaboratively develop and refine a framework. Some work groups will meet face-to-face, others will meet online.

Over the period of several months, we aim to produce:

  • An open source framework for governance (CC4 BY-SA-NC), along with how to evaluate this effectively.
  • One or more scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals.
  • The framework may be translated into tools, such as a new measurement model that measures team-level aspects in Columinity, and also other tooling (provided it honors the CC4 license).

Two ways to contribute

We need your help to achieve the above, and the help of many organizations. There are two ways to contribute:

1: Join a workgroup to co-develop the framework with us

Join a face-to-face or online meetup to meet with a group of 16-20 professionals and researchers three times (more if we all deem it valuable) over the period of several months. The sessions are facilitated with Liberating Structures, and provide opportunities for you to meet professionals and researchers to collaboratively build, improve and test the framework.

Work groups are highly interactive events, where you get to meet and interact with researchers and professionals. Picture by Lisanne Lentink.

The schedule for two workgroups, one face-to-face and one online, are already published on the site of the initiative. More workgroups will likely be organized at other locations.

You can sign up as an independent professional or researcher. You can also participate as a representative of your organization, bringing your organization's lessons, experiences and knowledge into the group. Several large organizations are already participating, which means there is a lot to learn from each other.

Note that if you sign up, please put in your best effort to attend all three sessions — each session builds directly on the previous one as we collaboratively develop and iterate the framework together.

2: Run a focus group in your organization to help us collect data

You can also contribute by running a focus group in your organization. A focus group is a 90-min workshop run by you or someone in your organization, based on a facilitation guide and protocol we provide. The aim is to collaboratively reflect on, and discuss, how AI is changing your work and your organization, and the challenges you experience. By providing an anonymized version of this data to our initiative, we can include your lessons and experiences in the development of the framework. This is beneficial for our research, and also highly insightful for participants of the focus group — maybe it's even the first time the trade-offs are discussed?

Focus groups are high-paced, highly interactive way to bring people in your organization together to reflect on AI, how it is affecting them and the organization. Picture by Lisanne Lentink.

Contribute

Help us address the societal challenge posed by AI. Yes, AI holds great potential for organizations, and yes, it can also harm people, their autonomy, and the environment. This initiative is aimed at addressing that challenge, and it also provides a powerful opportunity for organizations, professionals, and researchers to openly discuss challenges, learn from each other, and build networks. Let's work together to find a balanced solution that makes this technology part of our work.

Sign up via https://reflectiveai.org, or email to research@lucidinstitute.org.

Disclaimer on AI usage: this post was written manually by Christiaan Verwijs. Claude AI was only used to check for spelling and grammar. The banner at the top was created by Claude AI, based on an original and unmodified picture of Lisanne Lentink.