Tools for Thought: Understanding, Protecting, and Augmenting Human Cognition with Generative AI — From Vision to Implementation

  • Zelun Tony Zhang ,
  • Nick von Felten ,
  • Leon Reicherts ,
  • ,
  • Zhitong Guan ,
  • ,
  • Yue Fu ,
  • Jessica He ,
  • Kenneth Holstein ,
  • ,
  • Gonzalo Ramos ,
  • Anuschka Schmitt ,
  • Anjali Singh ,
  • Haotian Li ,
  • Srishti Palani ,
  • Peter Dalsgaard

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026) |

Published by ACM

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About this CHI 2026 workshop: GenAI radically widens the scope and capability of automation for work, learning, and creativity. While impactful, it also changes workflows, raising questions about its effects on cognition, including critical thinking and learning. Yet GenAI also offers opportunities for designing “tools for thought” (TfT) that protect and augment cognition. Such systems provoke critical thinking, provide personalized tutoring, or enable novel ways of sensemaking, among other approaches.

How does GenAI change workflows and human cognition? What are opportunities and challenges for designing GenAI systems that protect and augment thinking? Which theories, perspectives, and methods are relevant? This workshop aims to develop a multidisciplinary community interested in exploring these questions to protect against the erosion, and fuel the augmentation, of human cognition using GenAI.

This workshop is a follow-up to the CHI 2025 Tools for Thought workshop, which brought together 56 participants with 34 accepted submissions, culminating in a workshop synthesis and an HCI journal special issue on tools for thought. While last year’s workshop focussed on mapping the field, this edition moves towards developing operational frameworks, principles, and tools.

Proposal Abstract: Building on the first Tools for Thought (TfT) workshop at CHI 2025, we invite researchers, designers, and practitioners to further operationalise approaches for the design, usage, and evaluation of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) as a TfT. The first goal of the workshop is to put into focus which outcomes a TfT should help people achieve to effectively augment their cognition while avoiding its erosion. Secondly, we will explore how to achieve these outcomes through design and usage strategies. Third, the workshop will also address what a TfT needs for its successful adoption and integration into people’s flow, so that they can benefit from the tools’ potential in their own terms. By focussing on these three research goals, the workshop aims to further develop and advance the multidisciplinary TfT community interested in exploring research frameworks, theories, methods, and approaches to conceptualising, designing, and researching GenAI as a TfT.

Workshop website: https://ai-tools-for-thought.github.io/workshop/ (opens in new tab)