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The Synthetic Astronaut: Designing Human-AI Collaboration Protocols for Long-Duration Missions
The era of human-AI cohabitation in space has arrived. As missions push toward the Moon, Mars, and deep-space habitats, astronauts will not travel alone. They will be accompanied by increasingly intelligent systems, synthetic crew members that learn, adapt, and share responsibility in critical operations.
This presentation explores the design of collaboration protocols for a new kind of crew: hybrid teams composed of humans and AI agents, embodied or not. The “Synthetic Astronaut” is not just a robot in a flight suit, it is a conceptual shift in how we plan, train, and execute missions where trust, communication, and decision-making are shared across carbon and code.
Drawing from interdisciplinary fields, e.g. space systems design, cognitive science, and human-machine teaming, this talk will propose a framework for integrating synthetic agents into astronaut workflows. We will explore questions such as:
- How do we define operational boundaries between human and machine in isolation-critical environments?
- What does accountability look like when an AI makes a life-or-death recommendation?
- Can shared agency be designed in a way that enhances, rather than erodes, human autonomy?
Rather than focusing on speculative AGI, humanoid robots, or product demos, this talk will offer near-term, practical thinking on building collaboration protocols that anticipate not just what synthetic astronauts can do but how they will coexist with human explorers under extreme conditions.
For commercial operators and agencies alike, the question is no longer whether AI will join the crew but how we ensure the crew survives and thrives together.
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