John dreams of a world where human wellbeing and environmental sustainability ARE prioritized over exponential growth.

As executive director of the IEEE Global Initiative on the Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, John helps define guidelines for beneficial relationships between humans and their increasingly clever machine counterparts. His mission is to educate, train, and empower people developing these future technologies to implement ethically aligned design. John is also the executive director of the Council on Extended Intelligence (CXI), an interdisciplinary cohort of experts founded by the IEEE Standards Association and the MIT Media Lab that champions responsible participant design, data agency, and metrics of economic prosperity prioritizing people and the planet over profit and productivity. 

He is the author of Hacking Happiness and Heartificial Intelligence, and a contributor to Mashable and The Guardian. He also served as EVP of Social Media at Porter Novelli and spent a number of years as a professional actor. Whether he’s discussing ethics, researching the connections between happiness and technology, or playing the guitar, John is “seeking Eudaimonia,” and is unafraid to experiment by finding joy in his own life.

@JOHNCHAVENS