Kevin Joyce aims to help humans thrive in an AI-disrupted world
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, May 13, 2026
What can artificial intelligence still not touch? Island performer, composer and leadership facilitator Kevin Joyce aims to help his friends and neighbors on Vashon explore the answers to that question.
Later this month, Joyce will helm “Non-AI: The Human Design Experiment” — an immersive event he describes as a playful and provocative “living laboratory” to explore how natural intelligence can restore the human experience in an AI-saturated world.
The pay-what-you-can event is a co-production of Joyce’s longtime enterprise, EnJoy Productions, and Open Space for Arts & Community. It will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday, May 24, at Open Space.
It’s suitable for islanders in all walks and stages of life, Joyce said, expressing his hope that the crowd will include middle school and high school students, parents and grandparents, tech workers and tech Luddites.
His aim is to harness a wide cross-section of different perspectives and insights to help forge a path forward in a disruptive and unsettling time when AI is developing at breakneck speed.
“Whether you’re a tech expert or rarely pick up a smartphone, this experience is designed to strengthen the uniquely human capacities that machines cannot replicate: embodied imagination, emotional resonance and shared presence,” he said.
The afternoon will include an energetic mix of structured activities, games and spirited conversations — all centered around Joyce’s conviction that rational intelligence and creative agency make culture possible. The afternoon will also include a dessert potluck, celebrating yet another arena of human achievement — to concoct, taste and then generously share delectable treats with one another.
Tasting, feeling, thinking, creating and coming together in community to solve problems: all these things are more needed than ever in the present time, according to Joyce.
“Non-AI” is the latest project of EnJoy Productions, founded in 2003 by Joyce and his wife, Martha Enson. Both accomplished performers, the couple moved to Vashon 37 years ago as part of UMO Ensemble. In their work with EnJoy, they have created and presented immersive experiences for organizations including the United Nations, Amazon and Microsoft, as well as scores of nonprofit organizations and communities.
Joyce’s work in all these settings has now motivated him to take on the immensely complex topic of AI technology to help devise templates and protocols for supporting healthy human behavior in its use.
His Open Space presentation is the launch of what he hopes will expand to include similar events in other communities and even corporate settings — a project that has been supported in part by a grant from 4Culture.
He acknowledges that the topic of AI is emotionally charged and polarizing, with some people contending the technology will “herald a new human utopia and others believing it means the end of the world.”
Joyce isn’t out to take a side in that debate. Rather, he said, he hopes that “Non AI” will remind people of what it means to be their best human selves.
“The work ahead is not about resisting technology but about shaping the conditions under which humans remain capable of leading it,” he said. “The question is not whether AI will reshape our world — it already is. The question is whether we will strengthen the human capacities required to shape it wisely.”
Open Space — a place built to bring humans together to celebrate art, music and ideas — is the perfect venue for the launch of this new chapter in his work, he said.
Reserve tickets and/or make a donation to the event at openspacevashon.com, and find out more about Joyce’s plans to expand the project at non-ai.biz.
Elizabeth Shepherd is a former reporter and editor for The Beachcomber.
