Human-AI Teaming for People and Planet

The world's toughest challenges—from ending extreme poverty to reversing environmental degradation—are problems that no single actor can solve alone. In practice, progress often boils down to small teams coming together across sectors, disciplines, and geographies to align priorities and collaborate on effective solutions. Collective intelligence (CI), amplified by recent advances in AI, offers powerful insights and tools for this kind of collaborative problem solving. But there is a need for new arenas in which teams can combine and test CI research and AI tools to scale solutions for real-world impact.

To this end, this full-day workshop is designed as a multiplayer arena connecting practitioners, innovators, researchers, and AI tools to rapidly build, test, and scale CI-informed solutions for the world's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Using the Brookings/Rockefeller 17 Rooms methodology—a globally recognized approach to collaborative problem solving for the SDGs—participants will gather into multidisciplinary teams (or 'Rooms,' ) to prototype actionable initiatives, partnerships, or approaches that can make a tangible difference to one or more SDG outcome. Following initial Room-level problem solving, teams will visit other Rooms to share approaches before all Rooms assemble for a "rapid report-out" of solutions and discussion of process learnings.

The workshop will develop and test a suite of AI tools, including:

Matchmaker for curating interdisciplinary teams;
Team mate for supporting live collaboration and problem solving; and
Assessor for constructive feedback on the quality of team collaboration and potential SDG impact of team solutions

Room-outputs and workshop learnings will form the empirical basis of planned research outputs, such as a Brookings research product co-authored by workshop participants.

Workshop Schedule

Introduction (1hr)

Framing CI in the context of SDG challenges (keynote)
"Coffee chats" or "team dating" for networking
Workshop overview and AI tool demos

Session 1: Room Collaboration (2.5hrs)

Rooms co-create CI-informed solutions in specific SDG areas with facilitation support

Lunch (45 mins)

Session 2: Cross-Room Exchange (45 mins)

Participants visit another Room to exchange insights and enhance solutions

Session 3: Integration (30 mins)

Participants integrate feedback and insights into Room action.

Session 4: Report-out and Reflection (1hr)

Rooms present their solutions and discuss collaborative dynamics, challenges, and takeaways

Closing Remarks & Next Steps (15 mins)

Opportunities for ongoing collaboration, joint publications, and further research

Organizers

Jacob Taylor (Brookings): Jacob is a Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Sustainable Development, where he leads work at the intersection of collective intelligence, AI, and sustainable development. He is a core member of the 17 Rooms initiative—a platform for accelerating new forms of collaboration for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2024, Jacob convened a Brookings Roundtable on Collective Intelligence for sustainable development, gathering leading CI researchers, SDG practitioners, and AI tool developers. Before Brookings, Jacob was a consulting scientist to a DARPA program (ASIST) dedicated to building an AI teammate. Jacob holds a Ph.D. in cognitive anthropology from the University of Oxford where he studied as a Rhodes scholar. A former professional rugby player turned cognitive anthropologist, Jacob brings a unique lens to understanding how teams perform and collaborate under pressure.

Christoph Riedl (Northeastern University): Christoph is an Associate Professor for Information Systems and Management at Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School of Business, with joint appointments in Computer Science and Entrepreneurship & Innovation. His research examines the design of collaboration systems that enhance team performance, including algorithmically optimized team formation, coordination in open innovation, and AI-augmented decision-making. Christoph brings a deep background in computational social science, combining behavioral experiments, data science, and AI to advance the science of collaboration. Christoph holds a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich and conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University.

Jude Rayan (UC San Diego): Jude is a Ph.D. student in the Cognitive Science department at the University of California, San Diego, specializing in Human-AI collaboration. As a graduate researcher at the UCSD Design Lab, he studies how to design interactive systems that leverage AI to augment collaborative workflows that support co-design, brainstorming and collective intelligence. Prior to his doctoral studies, Jude completed a B.S. in Computer Science at Arizona State University and an M.S. in Neuroscience and Education at Columbia University.