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The November gathering will combine technology, economics and contemplative practices, with students helping lead discussions and a course other universities could replicate as the intended outcome.
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UVA is convening technology, education, religious and contemplative-practice leaders to develop—not unveil—a replicable undergraduate course on living with AI. The effort responds to a cited Pew finding that 55% of adults ages 18–29 were more concerned than excited about AI in daily life. For universities and AI companies, the symposium signals an effort to address AI’s effects on students’ agency, well-being and future prospects alongside technical and policy questions; the course’s eventual content remains unsettled.
The symposium is scheduled for November 18–19, 2026, at UVA’s Contemplative Commons; no start time, timezone or official watch link was announced.
Students will serve as moderators, panelists and convenors, with sessions focused on agency, well-being and envisioning a healthy future with AI.
Michael Sheehy says the discussion will include AI’s effects on education, work, relationships and families, as well as whether AI can help people through hardship—a question, not a demonstrated outcome.
The University of Virginia will host its AI Anxiety + Human Flourishing Symposium on November 18–19, 2026, at Contemplative Commons. The gathering is intended to help shape a new undergraduate course that other universities can replicate. UVA’s announcement does not list a start time, timezone or official watch link.
Organizers are bringing together technology experts, educators, religious leaders and specialists in contemplative practices to explore how young people can thrive alongside AI. The discussions are meant to lay the foundation for the course—not present a finished curriculum. The intended reach extends beyond UVA through a course other universities could duplicate.
Michael Sheehy, a research associate professor and director of research at UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center, is helping lead the effort. He describes AI’s effects on young people as reaching beyond how they learn and think to their future jobs, relationships and families. Organizers use the term “AI anxiety” for the dread they see among young adults.
UVA cites an August Pew Research Center poll in which 55% of adults ages 18 to 29 were more concerned than excited about AI in daily life. According to the university’s account, that was the first majority for this age group in the poll’s history. The finding provides context for the concern organizers want to address.
You can’t flourish passively, and you can’t do it alone.
Michael Sheehy, director of research at UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center
Students are integrated into the agenda as moderators, panelists and convenors, giving them roles in the discussions rather than only seats in the audience. The announced program centers on three responses to AI-related stress:
The speaker lineup spans technology and economics. It includes Reddit co-founder and former executive chair Alexis Ohanian, alongside Anton Korinek, Anthropic’s head of transformative AI economic studies, who is on leave from his economics professorship at UVA. Investor Paul Tudor Jones, founder and co-chair of Tudor Investment Corporation, is also scheduled to speak.
Other announced speakers include Outdoorithm co-founder and CEO Sally Steele; Father Michael Baggot, an associate professor of bioethics at the Vatican’s Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum; data scientist and statistician Shiva Jahani; and UVA President Scott Beardsley. Their participation reflects the organizers’ decision to bring religious, educational and technical perspectives into the same gathering.
The symposium builds on the Contemplative Sciences Center’s work researching and developing traditional and emerging mind-body practices. Sheehy points to prayer, meditation and spontaneous expression as examples of historical practices people can draw on. He describes the center’s work as framing and contextualizing those practices, and in some cases programming them.
That approach will sit alongside concerns about ethics, cybersecurity and AI’s growing role in daily life. Organizers want students to examine effects on education, the economy and public policy while recognizing their ability to shape their own futures. Sheehy also wants to explore whether AI itself can help people through change, hardship, grief and suffering—a question for the gathering, not a demonstrated outcome.
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