An independent space for research, public engagement, and design, dedicated to AI that strengthens autonomy, dignity, communication, and the capacity to act.
Human Agency AI begins with this question.
Human Agency AI grows out of the work of Marco Barbesta, an AI project developer, public speaker, and mentor with extensive international experience across business, education, communications, and social responsibility. He teaches at the University for Adults and Older Adults in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
The project reflects a path shaped between Italy, Europe, and the United States, in dialogue with university faculty, professionals, and organizations engaged in education, care, disability, and responsible innovation.
“In recent years, I have focused my work on the use of artificial intelligence as a tool of support for the person: older adults, education, assisted communication, disability, mentoring, and safe agentic systems.
Through Human Agency AI, I pursue a simple conviction: artificial intelligence has value when it helps people communicate more effectively, make more informed choices, preserve autonomy, and participate more fully in social life.”
We develop ideas, pathways, and prototypes for a more humane, responsible, and practical use of AI. Our work focuses on:
Human Agency AI explores a different direction: AI that restores possibility, relationship, voice, and the capacity to act.
Not a technology showcase or a promise of miracles, but a space for thought and practice where AI is examined, questioned, adapted, and designed from the starting point of the human person.
Human Agency AI grows out of real-world experience, not abstract theory. Several initiatives have already become living laboratories for research and design.
An exploration of AI as a supportive presence for older adults: companionship, memory, conversation, everyday orientation, and relational continuity.
An assisted communication project exploring how AI can help people with motor and communication difficulties express themselves with greater continuity, autonomy, and confidence.
A laboratory for safe agentic systems: AI capable of supporting human action while remaining within clear boundaries of consent, control, and verification.
These projects differ in context, but they share the same question: How can AI strengthen a person’s ability to communicate, choose, understand, and participate?
Human Agency AI also gathers short essays, notes, and reflections on the relationship between artificial intelligence and the human person. Not only technology. Also language, trust, responsibility, autonomy, care, memory, creativity, relationship, and human presence.
The aim is to contribute to a more mature conversation about AI: less shaped by easy enthusiasm or generalized fear, and more attentive to its real consequences in people’s lives.
Human Agency AI is also a space for dialogue with schools, universities, associations, cultural groups, local communities, professionals, and organizations engaged in education, care, and social responsibility.
Not “What can we automate?” but “What can we make more human, more accessible, and more conscious?”
For information, meetings, collaborations, or conversations about the project:
Human Agency AI
Artificial intelligence in service of human agency.