Olivia Tai

𓆑

Creating play spaces for being in-and-of the world.

Currently →

Synthetic Wisdom Studio is an emerging creative research practice asking:

How is AI impacting our psychological, social, and spiritual lives?

AI is occupying roles once reserved for people: lovers, therapists, oracles. The attention economy is evolving into an intimacy economy, where AI services offer to fulfill our deepest needs for human connection. What happens when millions of people interact daily with AI in this way?

A cartoon I made about a future of AI-mediated love.

I create sense-making spaces for people to come into deeper reflection around AI’s strange presence in modern life — with a focus on shifting through the messiness of our own lived experience and values. As one participant said: "An AI event that feels very human."
Past Talks & Workshops:

Spain, Mozilla Festival: Your AI-in-Law: Love in the Age of AI (11.9.25)
SF, Interact: Mapping Human-AI Relationships V2 (9.06.25)
SF, Interact: Mapping Human-AI Relationships V1 (8.25.25)
online, Public AI Summit: Wise Companionship w/ Artificial Minds (8.14.25)
NYC, Index.Space: Wise Companionship w/ Artificial Minds (7.30.25)
NYC, telos.haus: Wise Companionship w/ Artificial Minds (7.23.25)

Reach out to collborate, chat, or host a workshop!

Sign-up for more

Teaching →

Rats, Pigeons, Cockroaches

Fall 2025

Becoming Cyborg

Summer 2025

Creatures: 🐀🐦🪳

Summer 2025

Becoming Creature

Fall 2024

Play Studies

Fall 2024

Gatherings →

Immersive Games / Theater

a few times a year

Roughhousing

2024-25

Chimeras Meet-ups

2024-25

Beetles: An Interspecies Gathering

2023

Art →

Paintings

always

Documentary

2022

Design & Illustration

always

About me →

I love to design spaces for collective meaning-making around technology, ecology, and wonder. My new initiative Synthetic Wisdom Studio investigates AI’s impact on our psychological, social, and spiritual lives. Ecological, place-based teaching and community-building happens through Chimeras Collective with my collaborator Kyle Barnes.

Professionally: Strategy/Research + Project Management at OXMAN, a biodesign & innovation company spun out of MIT Media Lab. I was Terraformation’s first intern, where I worked all summer in a shipping container-turned-seed bank. Before that, I supported founders at climate / deep tech VC Fifty Years.

I graduated in 2022 with a degree in Psychology & Environmental Studies from Harvard, where I founded the first undergrad design club and started a business for student artists to gain experience selling their work.

Once upon a time I painted and made films. Occasionally, I moonlight as an NYC street performer either singing or clowning. You can find me happiest roughhousing with a friend in a muddy field, or cooking up game mechanics for my next immersive theater event.

my current curiosities

Contact

Writing

Are.na

Last Updated: January 2026