Building AI for Human Flourishing | Society for Affective Science Opening Plenary

How can generative AI be designed to support human flourishing? In this opening plenary talk at the Society for Affective Science, Julie Cachia, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Flourish Science, presents a psychologically grounded approach to building AI for mental health and well-being. Julie shares findings from multi-institutional randomized controlled trials evaluating Flourish, an AI-powered well-being app. Across studies, participants with access to Flourish reported improvements in positive affect, belonging, loneliness, resilience, and flourishing relative to care-as-usual control groups, while a subsequent large-scale trial also found reductions in symptoms of depression and anxiety. She also reflects on what it takes to translate affective science into products used at scale. Because what organizations measure tends to shape what they build, optimizing for engagement alone may not always align with user well-being. An alternative is to define the human outcomes a technology is intended to support, and rigorously measure whether it succeeds. This talk was part of the Society for Affective Science opening plenary on AI and mental health, organized by SAS 2026 Program Co-Chairs Desmond Ong and Katie Hoemann. Julie presented alongside Stephen Schueller and Nick Jacobson, followed by a discussion moderated by James Gross. Learn more about Flourish Science: https://www.myflourish.ai/ #ArtificialIntelligence #AffectiveScience #MentalHealth #HumanFlourishing #DigitalHealth