MIT Class Combines Anthropology and Computer Science to Design Humane Chatbots

New undergraduate course teaches students to create AI assistants that improve users' lives rather than just compete for their attention.

Published on Mar. 12, 2026

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At MIT, a friendship between an anthropologist and a computer scientist has led to the creation of an undergraduate class that combines the two disciplines to design chatbots in humane ways. The class, called "Humane User Experience Design," encourages students to integrate the interactional and interpersonal needs of humans into programming, with the goal of creating AI assistants that can be moral partners and social guides rather than just addictive distractions.

Why it matters

As young adults increasingly interact with social media and chatbots, there are concerns about the potential for unhealthy relationships with digital platforms. This class aims to address those concerns by teaching students to design AI chatbots that improve users' lives and self-improvement, rather than just compete for their attention.

The details

The class, 6.S061/21A.S02 (Humane User Experience Design), is a cross-listing between computer science and anthropology, allowing students to fulfill a humanities requirement while pursuing their career objectives. Professors Arvind Satyanarayan, a computer scientist, and Graham Jones, an anthropologist, created the class last summer with a grant from the MIT Morningside Academy for Design. They use methods from linguistic anthropology to teach students how to integrate human interactional and interpersonal needs into programming.

  • The class was created last summer with a grant from the MIT Morningside Academy for Design.
  • The MIT MAD Design Curriculum Program is currently accepting applications for the 2026-27 academic year, with a deadline of Friday, March 20.

The players

Arvind Satyanarayan

A computer scientist whose research develops tools for interactive data visualization and user interfaces, and co-creator of the "Humane User Experience Design" class.

Graham Jones

An anthropologist whose research focuses on communication, and co-creator of the "Humane User Experience Design" class.

Mary Feliz

A sophomore student who worked on the "Pond" chatbot project, designed to help young college graduates adapt to the challenges of independent adult life.

Emaan Khan

A graduate student who worked on the "Pond" chatbot project.

Claire Camacho

A graduate student who worked on the "Pond" chatbot project.

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What they’re saying

“There's a way in which you don't really fully externalize what you know or how you think until you're teaching. So, it's been really fun for me to see Arvind unfurl his expertise as a teacher in a way that lets me see how the pieces fit together - and discover underlying commonalities between our disciplines and our ways of thinking.”

— Graham Jones, Anthropologist (Mirage News)

“One of the things I really enjoyed is the reciprocal version of what Graham said, which is that my field - human-computer interaction - inherited a lot of methods from anthropology, such as interviews and user studies and observation studies. And over the decades, those methods have gotten more and more watered down. As a result, a lot of things have been lost.”

— Arvind Satyanarayan, Computer Scientist (Mirage News)

“ChatGPT and other large language models are trained on naturally occurring human communication, so they have all those genres inside them in a latent state, waiting to be activated. As a social scientist, I teach methods for analyzing human conversation, and give students very powerful tools to do that. But it ends up usually being an exercise in pure research, whereas this is a design class, where students are building real-world systems.”

— Graham Jones, Anthropologist (Mirage News)

What’s next

The MIT MAD Design Curriculum Program is currently accepting applications for the 2026-27 academic year, with a deadline of Friday, March 20.

The takeaway

This class demonstrates how combining computer science and anthropology can lead to the development of AI chatbots that are designed to be humane partners and social guides, rather than just addictive distractions. By prioritizing the interactional and interpersonal needs of users, the class is preparing students to create AI assistants that can improve people's lives.