About

The distinction matters. Most of the conversation about AI is a conversation about the tool — its speed, its capabilities, its risks. We think the more interesting question is what happens to the person on the other side of it. How do professionals change when AI enters the picture? How do we design that interaction so better thinking and decisions happen naturally? Not tools, not prompts — the relationship itself.

AI × HI — The Symbiotic Mind is that exploration, by Vlad Sterngold and Milena S. Nikolova, PhD. She brings behavioral science — the study of how humans actually change. He brings the practitioner's log — what it looks like to build AI systems and live inside them daily. Somewhere between those two lenses is something neither of us can see from our own side alone.

Vlad Sterngold

AI practitioner and builder based in Amsterdam. Daily user of AI systems, builder of AI products, and writer on human-AI symbiosis. Brings the practitioner's lens: what actually happens when you work closely with AI, and what it changes in how you think.

Milena S. Nikolova, PhD

Behavioral scientist and founder of BehaviorSMART based in Lausanne. Works with organizations on how humans actually change — what AI does and doesn't change about that, and how to design for the difference. Brings the science: behavior is not a bug in the adoption curve, it is the curve.

Why this, why now

Because the question that matters is not whether AI is powerful — it is. The question is whether the relationship between human and AI is being designed, or left to chance. We think most of it is being left to chance. We are building the answer in public, one piece at a time.