Our craft – the craft of systemic facilitation – is on the eve of a fundamental transformation. AI is entering the field. And two distinct pathways are emerging for how this transformation might unfold:
- AI as a tool for processing and converting workshop outputs
- AI as a co-facilitator, supporting sense-making in the room
Recently, I had the privilege of hosting an Open Space session with around 50 facilitators, supported by Nyx, my AI co-facilitator. The session was part of the annual Large Group Facilitation Forum, hosted by Matthias zur Bonsen and Jutta Herzog. The guiding question of our Open Space was:
“What happens when AI is involved in co-facilitation? Who holds responsibility?”
Many of the participants were experienced consultants, trainers, process facilitators, and leaders – people accustomed to holding complexity, reading group dynamics, and working with uncertainty.
I will report separately on the workshop flow and its concrete results. This post focuses on the different perspectives on human–AI facilitation that emerged along the way.
What became visible in the room was less a debate about technology. It was a mirror of a profession in transition – not as a landscape of opinions, but as four clearly recognisable voices in the field.
1. The Explorers – “Let’s play before we fully understand”
This group brought lightness, curiosity, and a strong willingness to experiment. Several voices spoke about wanting to become beginners again, learning with younger generations, trying things out without immediately needing to control or evaluate them.
They were not interested in tools as such, but in experience. Not in efficiency, but in opening new spaces of possibility.
Their strength: openness, courage to not-knowing, joy in learning.
Their blind spot: risks can be underestimated – especially where responsibility, power, or emotional depth are involved.
2. The Professionally Unsettled – “What remains of my craft if this takes over?”
Here the tone became more existential. Some participants articulated – openly or between the lines – a professional irritation or even a quiet sense of injury: If structuring, summarising, synthesising, or pattern recognition can be done by a machine, what remains of authorship, professional dignity, and craft?
This was not fear of job loss in an economic sense. It was a question of identity. One voice put it sharply:
“If AI starts making meaning for the group, we regress into facilitation logics from the 1960s.”
Their strength: protecting professional integrity and critical standards.
Their blind spot: the risk of hardening into defensiveness and blocking learning movements.
3. The Responsibility Guardians – “Not everything that is possible is responsible”
This group brought ethical boundaries very clearly into the room. Especially in sensitive contexts – crisis work, trauma, existential situations – several people said explicitly: This is where I personally draw a line for using AI. Not out of technophobia, but out of responsibility toward human beings.
Interestingly, the question shifted:
Not “Is AI allowed to do this?”
but: “Can I take responsibility for this – and what price am I willing to pay?”
Their strength: ethical clarity, protection of dignity, relational responsibility.
Their blind spot: the risk of prematurely limiting experimentation or moralising complexity.
4. The Systemic Observers – “Something bigger is shifting here than just a new tool”
These voices looked less at the concrete experiment and more at the larger pattern: parallels to the introduction of online facilitation, emerging new roles such as technical host or process guardian, shifts in attention, authority, and knowledge.
They spoke about a new epistemological field – not simply about new methods.
Their strength: perspective, contextual intelligence, pattern awareness.
Their blind spot: the temptation to remain in analysis and postpone concrete learning.
Not four camps – but an inner field of tension
Importantly, these four figures are not separate camps. Most people in the room carried several of these voices within themselves.
- Curiosity and scepticism.
- Playfulness and responsibility.
- Unsettled identity and systemic reflection.
This ambivalence is not a weakness. It is a sign of maturity. The profession is not facing a simple decision for or against AI. It is facing a renegotiation of its own identity, responsibility, and attention. And this work cannot be delegated – neither to technology nor to theory.
How do you see your craft shifting?
A comprehensive report about the workshop in German language can be downloaded here.