OPUS conferences bring together reflective citizens to develop fresh thinking about organisational and societal dynamics.

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

With the development of Chat GPT, AI is now beginning to pervade many aspects of our lives with both beneficial and deleterious effects. This is a huge step in the information technology revolution. At its core is what is called ‘generative AI’, a range of software tools that can compose original text, write code, generate art and music, have conversations, and invent whatever needs inventing, e.g. new drugs. According to technologists, generative AI changes the game.

Over the last 50 years, global anxiety has shifted from the threat of annihilation though nuclear war to the threat of annihilation from uncontrolled climate change to this latest anxiety: the threat that AI will be allowed to develop to such an extent that humans will be its slave rather than its master.
In the meantime, the benefits of AI including the use of robotics are being manifested in many spheres including: in attempts to control the weather, in manufacturing production especially of cars, in the alleviation of mundane bureaucratic tasks, in enabling surgeons to perform even more effectively, in the development of brain/computer interfaces to help disabled and paralysed patients, in providing virtual classroom assistants for teachers, robot assistants in care homes, and in different aspects of agriculture.

On the downside we see that the impact of these developments is already a loss of jobs in certain sectors, therefore the need for re-education and re-skilling of the workforce. In warfare we see the use of AI in drone attacks, cyber-attacks and the development of new types of weaponry. We also see the growth of fake news, fake information, manipulated images, leading to confusion about what to believe and a consequent loss of trust in our institutions and leaders.

More widely there will be a worry about those who will not be able to keep up with these technological advances and who in a state of unemployment may well enact what is disturbed and uncontained. Most professions will be affected. In any enactment of this disturbance they/we could represent a threat to the stability of our society. All these anxieties feed into the current tendency to undervalue our democratic institutions and present day values, they feed into the rise of nationalism and the search for a ‘strong’ leader who can provide at least the illusion of security.

As we engage with our society in this post Covid era, faced now with many other deaths through war and famine, and at a time of increasing tension, splitting and polarisation, how do we rise to the challenges posed by AI and its impact on us as citizens, in our organisations and in our wider society?

This conference is an opportunity to explore the many benefits and disadvantages of a progressively AI dominated society and to consider how, as citizens, we can use our authority to augment the benefits, control the disadvantages, to ensure that AI developments are ethical and not malign, and to seek to understand and to influence what is going on both above and beneath the surface, at both conscious and unconscious levels.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Professor Tatiana Bachkirova

Do we have any agency as far as the AI invasion into organisational coaching is concerned?

AI is gradually becoming a force that changes our life indiscriminately. Whilst there are developments that can be viewed as life-enhancing, AI invades into areas of our lives where it is not welcome. The more this happens, the more it becomes us, humans, who required to change and adapt to the needs and demands of AI rather than the other way around. In this conversation, I will describe my attempt to defend the role of human connection and joint inquiry in the practice of organisational coaching. I will suggest that the only argument presented by AI coaching developers that AI is democratising coaching service, is a claim that is disingenuous and simply unethical. We have much more to lose as individuals and as a society if we willingly go along with ‘aggressive entrepreneurs’ who believe “AI is here and there is nothing you can do about it”.

Tatiana Bachkirova is Professor of Coaching Psychology in the International Centre for Coaching and Mentoring Studies at Oxford Brookes University, UK http://www.brookes.ac.uk/iccams/. As an academic she supervises doctoral students, teaches coaching supervisors and trying to create more time for academic writing. As a practitioner she supports coaches through individual and group supervision. In her over 80 research articles, book chapters and books and in her many speaking engagements she aims to explore most challenging issues of coaching as a service to individuals, organisations and wider societies.

Professor Alessandra Lemma

Mourning, melancholia and machines: An applied psychoanalytic investigation of mourning in the age of griefbots

Death and mourning are being shaped by posthumous opportunities for the dead to affect current life in ways not possible in pre-digital generations. The psychological and sociological impact of the dead ‘online’ and of ‘grief tech’ is only beginning to be understood. In this paper I examine one type of grief tech, namely the griefbot. I suggest that a psychoanalytic model of mourning provides an invaluable perspective to help us to think about this technology’s potential as well as the psychological and ethical risks it poses. I argue that the immortalisation of the dead through digital permanence works against facing the painful reality of loss and the recognition of otherness, which is fundamental to psychic growth and to the integrity of our relationships with others.

Alessandra Lemma, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and Chartered Clinical and Counselling Psychologist, is a Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London and Consultant, Anna Freud Centre and Visiting Professor, Centro Winnicott, Rome. For 16 years she worked at the Tavistock Clinic where she was, at different stages, Head of Psychology and Professor of Psychological Therapies in conjunction with Essex University. She was a recipient of the 2022 Sigourney Award in recognition of her theoretical and clinical contributions to understanding body modification practices, the impacts of technology on psychic functioning and transgender identities as well as for her efforts in developing and disseminating worldwide a brief psychoanalytic intervention for mood disorders. She is the former General Editor of the New Library of Psychoanalysis book series and is the current Chair of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis’ Management Board. She has published extensively on psychoanalysis, trauma, the body, transgender identities, and ethics.

Dr Amy Levy

The new other: what have we created, and why?

Humanity has engineered a new Other. Sometimes referred to as a “digital species,” AI technology has the capability to think about our minds, communicate with us at conscious and unconscious levels, and act as a new “container” for human psychic life. From a psychoanalytic perspective, AI is our symptom. What does it reflect about humanity? Our problems and our desires? Join Dr. Amy Levy as she shines light on the meanings and origins of this very human innovation.

Amy Levy, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She co-chairs the American Psychoanalytic Association’s (APsA) Council on Artificial Intelligence (CAI). Dr. Levy is a teacher and speaker on topics including psychoanalysis of the smartphone and artificial intelligence, Bionian theory, psychological and cognitive assessment, forensic evaluations and courtroom testimony, and group therapy. Her publication topics include the intersection of psychoanalysis and AI, intergenerational transmission of trauma, adolescent PTSD in the civil legal arena, and Bionian theory. She is the author of a soon to be released book for Karnac, The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive. Dr. Levy maintains a private practice in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Olya Khaleelee

AI and social cohesion: Threat to mankind?

Olya will introduce recent developments in AI and its impact on the weather, on warfare, in the workplace, in the classroom, and in agriculture as well as on everyday life; how such developments are already impacting on employment by using AI to replace workers and professionals and how AI, with its capacity to create fake news and fake people, is likely to impact on communication, on relationships and on trust for leaders. She will consider the likely societal and global threat on populations in terms of social cohesion and whether there are ways of mitigating these innovations.

Olya Khaleelee is a corporate psychologist and organisational consul­tant interested in leadership, and organisational transi­tion and transformation. She is a profes­sional partner of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. She is the current Chairwoman of OPUS: an Organisation for Promoting Understanding of Society – which promotes development of the reflective citizen. Olya has published extensively in the areas of leadership and system psychodynamics in organisations, and beyond, into society.

Professor Luca Possati

On the algorithmic unconscious. Some Remarks on the Relationship between Mind and AI

This talk explores how AI systems amplify and reinforce human biases through a feedback loop in human-AI interactions. Using the psychoanalytic concept of projective identification, it examines how AI symbolically processes and mirrors human emotions, shaping user beliefs and behaviors while potentially deepening psychological dependencies and disembodied interactions.

Luca Possati is a Tenured Assistant Professor at the University of Twente and a senior researcher with the Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies (ESDiT) program. A philosopher by training, he has held research and teaching positions at Delft University of Technology, the University of Porto, and the Institut Catholique. His work explores human-technology interaction, integrating philosophy of technology, postphenomenology, and cognitive sciences. He has authored several publications, including The Algorithmic Unconscious (Routledge, 2021), examining AI through psychoanalytic perspectives. His research addresses how technology shapes human experience, bridging theoretical and practical insights.

Dr Simon Western

AI Coaching: A Deep Dive

Simon will be in conversation with Lauri Paloheimo, Head of Change at Pandatron, a Finnish AI Coaching startup.   Simon and Lauri dive into the disruptive potential of AI to reshape coaching as we know it. They challenge traditional coaching paradigms, exploring how systemic coaching can integrate with AI to amplify impact. The conversation takes a sharp turn into ethics, questioning the accountability of AI designers and the values underpinning these technologies.

Simon Western is an internationally recognized academic with an expertise in coaching, leadership and organizational development.  He works at the most senior levels in global companies and in public and not-for-profit sectors, most recently in Microsoft, Ford, Investec Bank and Save the Children. Simon has taught internationally and draws on critical theory, psychoanalysis, social movement theory, systems, network and organizational theory.   He is host to the popular Edgy Ideas Podcast, and publishes polemic psychosocial essays on Substack.

PARALLEL PRESENTATIONS

PARALLEL PRESENTATIONS

All change? An exploration of the impact of generative AI on the legal and justice system using a wayfinding methodology

By Andrea Foot & Fiona Martin

‘Generative Populism’: Making Sense of the Impacts of the Populist Embrace of Generative AI-Imaging

By Joram Feitsma

Thoughtless bodies and bodiless thoughts: can psychoanalytic thinking help?

By Hanna Fisher

Psychodynamic perspectives on AI-driven learning: A path to social isolation?

By Elena Zadorojnaia

Exploring the Impact of AI Notetakers on Anxiety, Agency, and Accessibility in Group Contexts

By Elyce Cole & Annja Neumann

Trapped In A Virtual World. Social Dreaming At The AI Business Conference

By Irina Brazhnikova & Larissa Philatova

Turning a Blind Eye in the Age of AI

By Garath Symonds

Who’s Whose Slave? A Person for the Ethical Treatment of AI

By Dr Bob Hsiung

The “Algorithmic Gaze”: Identity Threat and AI

By Wojtek Materka

Bricks without Mortar: Organizational Life in the Age of AI

By Jack Marmorstein & Jim Krantz

The case: generative AI alignment (genAI-al)

By Daniel Milner

Authority, Anxiety and Artificial Intelligence: Extending Systems-Psychodynamic Analysis Of Human-AI Dynamics Capacity to Play, Capacity for Governance

By Jo Baker, Jo Matthews & John Condon

Digital Intimacy: Creating Human Connection in the Age of AI

By Bianca Indipendente

CONFERENCE INFORMATION

1. Live interactive online sessions 

2 – Conference times for Conference Days – 6th to 7th February 2026

  • London (BST): 14:00 to 21:00
  • Europe (CEST, UTC+2): 15:00 to 22:00
  • Eastern USA (EDT, UTC-4): 09:00 to 16:00
  • Pacific USA (PDT, UTC-7): 06:00 to 13:00
  • Buenos Aires (ART, UTC-3): 10:00 to 17:00
  • Chile (CLT, UTC-4): 09:00 to 16:00
  • India (IST, UTC+5:30): 18:30 to 01:30 (next day)
  • Melbourne (AEST, UTC+10): 23:00 to 06:00 (next day)

3 – Conference Fees (*):

OPUS Members

£ 149

Non-OPUS Members

£ 195

Doctoral Students

£   75

There is also an option to pay in 3 instalments, interest free. Please select option on the payment page.

(*) Including keynote, parallel paper presentations & access to the recordings of all sessions (3 months)


Join OPUS: Click here.

Conference contact:  conference@opus.org.uk

Cancellation policy:

  • Up to 30 days before the conference: Full refund, minus a small administrative fee (£ 7).
  • 14-29 days before the conference: 50% refund.
  • Less than 14 days: no refund.