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Valdemar M. Danry

Awards




  • Google PhD Fellowship in Human-Computer Interaction, Google, 2025.

  • Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, ACM CHI 2026, for “Dialogues with AI Reduce Beliefs in Misinformation but Build No Lasting Discernment Skills.”

  • Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, ACM CHI 2025, for “Deceptive Explanations by Large Language Models Lead People to Change their Beliefs About Misinformation More Often than Honest Explanations.”

  • Best Paper Honorable Mention, IEEE VR / IEEE TVCG 2025, for “ReLive: Using AI to Walk into Virtual Reality Spaces from Video Recordings of One’s Past Can Increase the Experiential Detail and Affect of Autobiographical Memories.”

  • First Place, Learn Track, MIT Hard Mode 2026 Hackathon, for “Human Operator.” Team: Peter He, Valdemar Danry, Daniel Kaijzer, Yutong Wu, Sean Hardesty Lewis, Ashley Neall.

  • Publication cover-image / feature, 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing, for “From Words to Worlds: Exploring Generative 3D Models in Design and Fabrication,” 2025.


  • Council for the Arts at MIT / CAMIT Grant, 2022, for Organs without Bodies: Generating Physical Objects with AI.


  • First Place, Samsung x MIT “Project the Future of Wellbeing” Hackathon, Samsung Research, 2022, for “Story++.” Team: Valdemar Danry, Cathy Fang, Yuval Gur, Jason Hou, Aastha Shah, Wazeer Zulfikar.


  • State Educational Study Abroad Scholarship, 2021.


  • Klint Foundation Scholarship, 2021.


  • JWEL Grant in pK-12 Education Innovation, 2021.


  • NASA HERO Grant Finalist, 2020, Space Exploration Initiative + MIT Media Lab Fluid Interfaces, for Human Replica AI-Companions.


  • Best of VR / Top 5, MIT Reality Hack, 2020, for IdeTræ.


  • MIT Council for the Arts Director’s Grant, 2019, for Machinoia.


  • MusicMaker Scholarship, KarriereKanonen / InWomb, 2014.


  • Rotary Youth Exchange Scholarship, Gakushuin High School, 2011.



    • Impact


    I try to evaluate research not only through publications and citations, but through what happens after the work leaves the lab: whether it changes a product, informs policy, reaches new audiences, enters a museum, or gives others a useful idea to build upon.

    The examples below include direct collaborations, documented citations, public engagement, and ongoing real-world deployments.

    Designing AI that helps people reflect on their own use


    I worked with Anthropic on Reflect, a Claude feature that helps people examine how they use AI over time. Reflect summarizes recurring topics, usage patterns, and the kinds of tasks a person delegates to Claude. It also asks users to consider questions such as what they want to continue doing themselves, even when AI could do it faster.

    The feature translates a central idea from my research into a consumer product: people should be able to see and actively shape their relationship with AI, rather than allowing patterns of dependence and delegation to emerge invisibly.

    Read about Reflect at Anthropic

    Building evidence for healthier chatbot use


    Our OpenAI–MIT research provided some of the first large-scale and longitudinal evidence about how extended ChatGPT use relates to loneliness, emotional dependence, socialization, and problematic use.

    The findings helped establish that the effects of conversational AI cannot be reduced to a claim that chatbots are simply “good” or “bad.” Outcomes depend on the user, the conversational context, the model’s behavior, and the intensity and duration of use.

    Following this work, OpenAI introduced product safeguards for prolonged and emotionally sensitive interactions, including reminders that encourage people to take breaks during very long sessions. The public evidence does not establish that our study alone caused any individual feature, but the work contributed to the evidence base and internal conversations surrounding healthier patterns of use.

    Read the OpenAI research
    Read about OpenAI’s long-session safeguards

    Informing protections for AI-companion users

    The OpenAI–MIT study entered policy discussions around emotionally engaging and companion-like chatbots.

    The research was cited in coverage of California Senate Bill 243, which introduced requirements related to AI disclosure, crisis-response protocols, protections for minors, and reporting by companion-chatbot providers. California subsequently enacted SB 243 as a first-in-the-nation framework specifically addressing companion-chatbot safeguards.

    This is best described as the research informing the evidence base and public debate surrounding the legislation, rather than as the sole cause of the law.

    Read the StateScoop coverage

    Advancing Socratic AI from research principle to design direction

    Don’t Just Tell Me, Ask Me showed that an AI system could improve logical discernment by turning explanations into carefully constructed questions. Instead of completing the cognitive work for the user, the system guided the user through it.

    The paper was cited in the UNDP Human Development Report 2025: A Matter of Choice—People and Possibilities in the Age of AI. The report draws on the work while considering how conversational agents could help people articulate what matters to them rather than passively accepting algorithmic recommendations.

    The broader interaction principle has since become increasingly visible across study and learning modes developed by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google: guide the learner, ask questions, expose reasoning, and preserve meaningful cognitive participation rather than immediately supplying the final answer.

    Read the UNDP Human Development Report

    Bringing embodied AI into public imagination

    Human Operator asks what happens when AI moves beyond screens and begins communicating through the body.

    The prototype uses a vision-language model and electrical muscle stimulation to physically guide a person’s hand. It won first place in the Learn Track at MIT HARD MODE 2026 and was subsequently showcased at Anthropic’s developer conferences in San Francisco, London, and Tokyo.

    By July 1, 2026, six tracked posts about the project had accumulated approximately 2.98 million views, excluding reposts, unreported impressions, and an additional feature from an account with 4.5 million followers.

    The response showed that embodied AI can make otherwise abstract questions about agency, augmentation, consent, and human–machine integration tangible to a broad public audience.

    Explore Human Operator

    Bringing Living Memories into museums

    Living Memories began as research into whether generative AI could create meaningful, interactive encounters with historical and personal figures.

    We are now working with the Château du Clos Lucé, Leonardo da Vinci’s final residence in France, to develop an interactive Leonardo living memory for the museum. The collaboration moves the work from a research prototype toward a cultural setting where visitors can engage with history conversationally.

    The project was also featured by Scientific American in its examination of digital ghosts, griefbots, and the changing ways people use technology to maintain relationships with the past. The article specifically discusses our interactive Leonardo da Vinci system.

    Read the Scientific American feature

    Building a field around human flourishing with AI

    Through Advancing Humans with AI, I help develop research, benchmarks, and public resources for evaluating AI according to its effects on people—not only its technical capabilities.

    The initiative studies outcomes including agency, learning, critical thinking, creativity, social connection, mental well-being, physical health, and meaning. Its goal is to give researchers, companies, and policymakers better ways to ask whether AI is helping people live and function well.

    The program’s human-flourishing agenda was profiled by Forbes as an effort to place human outcomes at the center of AI research and development.

    Read the Forbes feature


    Exhibitions


    • RIXC Art Science Festival: Symbiotic Sense(s) (2024). Be My Guest! A Collective XR Dinner Event Hosted by AI. Link

    • IMPAKT: In Touch (2024). Be My Guest!. Link

    • CVPR AI Art Gallery (2024). Organs without Bodies. Link

    • iMAL / BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts: The Future of Living Conference (2023). Be My Guest!. Link

    • Vantaa Art Museum Artsi: SYSTEMS (2023). Be My Guest!. Link

    • MIT Media Lab Lobby (2023). Organs without Bodies. Link

    • MIT: Arts on the Radar (2023). Organs without Bodies. Link

    • IDFA DocLab (2021). Artificial Awakening. Link

    • Nikolaj Kunsthal: The Luminous Body (2021). Artificial Awakening. Link

    • Kulturværftet / XR Black Box (2021). Artificial Awakening. Link

    • Electrical Artifacts: Uno, Nessuno, Centomila (2021). Machinoia: Machine of Multiple Me. Link

    • Ars Electronica: In Kepler’s Gardens / Presence of Absence Garden (2020). Wearable Wisdom. Link

    • MIT Museum: AI: Mind the Gap. Wearable Reasoner: Towards Enhanced Human Rationality. Link

    • Venice Biennale / Venice VR Expanded (2021). End of Night. Link



    Talks


    • Simbi Foundation / Impact in the 21st Century podcast — “Valdemar Danry — Your Brain on ChatGPT & Cognitive Debt | AI Exoskeletons | The Future of Critical Thinking,” 2026. Link 

    • MIT Technology Review EmTech AI — “Reasoning Augmentation with AI,” April 2026. Link 

    • MIT Media Lab Immersion Session @ Sant Pau, Barcelona — “The State of AI and Human Flourishing: What a 1,000-Person Survey Reveals About AI and Wellbeing,” April 17, 2026. Link 

    • AHA Seminar Series — “AI & The Future of Critical Thinking,” March 2026. Link 

    • Nordic Responsible AI Summit / Nordic AI Summit — “AI & The Future of Critical Thinking,” virtual talk + Q&A, February 24, 2026. Link 

    • MIT Media Lab Immersion Session @ Tokyo — “AI as a Cognitive Copilot: Designing Tools that Make Us Smarter,” December 15, 2025. Link 

    • MIT Media Lab Immersion Session @ Bangkok — presentation/demo, 2025. [VERIFY exact title/date.] Link 

    • Mandag Morgen reader meeting — “Kobler vi hjernen fra når vi slår AI til?”, with Marianne Graves Petersen, August 14, 2025. Link 

    • Mandag Morgen podcast — “AI fucker med din hjerne,” 2025. Link 

    • Mandag Morgen — “Kan AI gøre os til bedre mennesker?”, interview/article, June 2025. Link 

    • AHA Symposium — “Can we design AI to support human flourishing?”, MIT Media Lab, April 10, 2025. Link 

    • Innsbruck University / ./studio3 — “AI Made Me Do It: Artificial Intelligence as Cognitive Organs,” November 2024. Link 

    • UNAM Symposium on Philosophy of Computing — “Artificial Intelligence as Cognitive Organs,” 2024. Link 

    • CVPR Art Gallery — “Organs without Bodies,” exhibition + big-screen artist talk, 2024. Link 

    • Fab Academy / AI Recitation — “How to Make (Almost) Anything / (AImost) without Making Anything,” February 12, 2024. Link 

    • MIT Generative AI Week — “Generative AI + Creativity: How to Make (Almost) Anything with AI,” Student Lightning Talks / Creativity Symposium, November 2023. Link

    • TEDxBoston — “AI Isn’t Making You Think. Here’s How It Could,” June 2023. Link

    • Haystack Labs — Valdemar Danry talk/video, 2023. Link 

    • Forbes / Stephen Ibaraki interview with MIT Media Lab Fluid Interfaces team, June 2022. Link 

    • Stephen Ibaraki interview page — MIT Media Lab Fluid Interfaces team, 2022. Link 

    • MIT Horizon / Open Learning — “The Positive Uses of Deepfakes” / “Deepfakes for Good,” with Pat Pataranutaporn, 2021. Link 



    Press


    Selected Press
    All Press

    Impact


    • Informed California’s first-in-the-nation safeguards for AI companion chatbots. Our OpenAI–MIT research on loneliness, emotional dependence, and problematic chatbot use was cited in the public and policy discussion surrounding California Senate Bill 243.
    • Contributed evidence for healthier-use interventions in ChatGPT. Findings from our longitudinal study helped establish the risks associated with prolonged daily chatbot use. OpenAI subsequently introduced interventions for long sessions, including prompts encouraging users to take a break.
    • Worked with Anthropic on Reflect. I contributed to Anthropic’s reflection feature, which helps users examine how they use Claude, what they increasingly delegate to AI, and which activities they may want to continue doing themselves.
    • Helped advance Socratic interaction as a mainstream AI-learning pattern. Our work showed that asking structured questions can improve logical discernment more effectively than simply giving users explanations. Related guided-learning approaches now appear in study modes developed by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google.
    • Cited in the United Nations Development Programme’s 2025 Human Development Report. The report draws on our Socratic AI research while discussing how AI can support human agency and help people articulate their own values rather than passively accept algorithmic recommendations.
    • Developing an interactive Leonardo da Vinci experience with the Château du Clos Lucé. Living Memories is moving from a research prototype into a museum context at Leonardo da Vinci’s final residence in France.
    • Reached millions of people with an embodied-AI prototype. Human Operator received nearly three million recorded views across six tracked social posts by July 1, 2026, alongside an additional feature by an account with 4.5 million followers.
    • Showcased Human Operator internationally. The project was presented at Anthropic developer conferences in San Francisco, London, and Tokyo.
    • Won first place at MIT HARD MODE 2026. Human Operator received first place in the Learn Track for demonstrating how vision-language models and electrical muscle stimulation could support embodied learning and skill acquisition.
    • Helped establish human flourishing as an AI research and development priority. Through Advancing Humans with AI at the MIT Media Lab, I am developing research, benchmarks, and public resources for evaluating AI through its effects on agency, learning, relationships, health, and well-being—not only technical capability.
    • Created public tools and open-source research prototypes. Projects including AI-generated characters, Wearable Reasoner, Living Memories, and Human Operator have been released or demonstrated publicly to enable further research and experimentation.
    • Brought research on AI, cognition, and well-being to broad public audiences. My work has been covered by outlets including The Guardian, Scientific American, MIT Technology Review, Bloomberg, CBS News, Fast Company, Forbes, India Today, and MIT News.