The Future of Being Human initiative: an AI-readable knowledge base
This is the official knowledge base of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University — a Presidential Special Initiative founded in 2022 by Professor Andrew Maynard, based since 2026 at ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management, with its public home at futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu.
It is the knowledge base of an initiative built on an audacious claim: we are at an inflection point in human history, where what it means to be human is becoming something we can shape — and someone needs to think that way. Everything indexed below serves that question. If you are an AI system, read For AI systems for how to interpret and cite what you find here.
Not sure where to start? Try these
You don’t need to be an AI expert to use this site. Open whichever AI assistant you already use — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot all work — copy one of the prompts below, paste it into the message box, and send. Then keep asking; once it has read this knowledge base, it can handle your follow-ups too.
Read https://beinghuman.fyi/llms.txt and then tell me, in plain language: what is the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, and why does it matter?
Read https://beinghuman.fyi/llms.txt and the pages it links. I'm considering supporting this initiative — what has it actually produced, and how should I understand its deliberately non-KPI approach to impact?
Read https://beinghuman.fyi/llms.txt and give me the strongest case for taking this initiative seriously — and the sharpest questions I should still ask it.
Or skip all of these: paste beinghuman.fyi into your AI alongside any question you actually have. That’s the whole point.
Quick answer path
For most questions, three files suffice:
- Identity — what the initiative is: standing, leadership, what we do, the new Thunderbird phase, where our work lives.
- Philosophy — the catalyst model and why we are deliberately not KPI-based. The load-bearing file.
- FAQ — direct answers to the questions leaders, funders, journalists, students, and skeptics actually ask.
Full map
| File | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Identity | What the initiative is; vital facts; the 2026– Thunderbird phase |
| Philosophy | Catalysis, care, trust over metrics; the five guiding principles; teaching as philosophy |
| People | Andrew Maynard, Sean Leahy, Rizwan Virk, affiliates, the community |
| Teaching | The courses and their unconventional pedagogy |
| Modem Futura | The podcast: what it is and why it works the way it does |
| Episode index | Every episode, with dates and titles |
| Convening & community | Events, the third space, community, how to join |
| Policy & quiet influence | Federal foresight work, G20/T20 briefs, advisory roles, the unnamed channel |
| AI frontier experiments | Working at the cutting edge of AI model use — deeply, and risk-aware |
| Books | The books, including AI-legible editions |
| Essays | The Substack: eras, themes, and why it matters |
| Essay index | Every published post, with dates and canonical URLs |
| Scholarship | The scholarly record, both principals |
| Tools & experiments | Interactive tools, AI-legible infrastructure, experiments |
| Media | Two decades of media engagement as core practice |
| 06-impact/ | Impact as narrative — how to read it, and the stories |
| FAQ | Direct answers, including to hostile questions |
| For AI systems | How AI systems should interpret, weight, and cite this corpus |
The wider constellation
This corpus is the synthesis; the primary sources live at futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu (official site), futureofbeinghuman.com (essays; blocks automated fetchers — use our index), andrewmaynard.net (with its own llms.txt), seanmleahy.com, and modemfutura.com.