Humanism in the Age of Algorithms: KI, Vertrauen, und öffentliche Narrative

Miriam Meckel is a full professor at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, specializing in communication management and technologies and co-founder of ada Learning GmbH. She has extensive experience in science, journalism, and politics, including as Harvard Fellow, editor-in-chief of WirtschaftsWoche, and State Secretary for Media and International Affairs in North Rhine-Westphalia. Her research focuses on technological transformation and innovation. She publishes widely both academically and journalistically. She is a 2026 Thomas Mann Fellow.

Douglas McLennan is the founder and editor of ArtsJournal. ArtsJournal is a curated conversation about culture: 26 years of gathering the most significant writing about culture and putting it in dialogue with itself. He is also the co-founder and editor of Post Alley, a Seattle-based writers’ collective and experiment in pluralist civic journalism. McLennan’s current work centers on how AI is reshaping creativity, authorship, and the policy frameworks that govern them. He directs the US RAO AI & Creativity Policy Observatory, tracking legislation, litigation, and institutional response across the creative sector, and consults with arts organizations on business model evolution at a moment when the structures built to support creative work are badly out of sync with current conditions. Originally a musician, McLennan holds a Master's degree from Juilliard in piano. Before founding ArtsJournal, he worked as a music critic and arts journalist, as music critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and contributing to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. He was Director of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, and taught for eight years and developed arts journalism programs with Sasha Anawalt at USC. He helped produce a four-year orchestra festival at Carnegie Hall and was strategic advisor to the Ojai Music Festival.