AI Summit Budapest 2025

John C. Havens (USA)

Author, Heartificial Intelligence

After leading a successful professional acting career for over fifteen years in New York City (you can see my work on old Law & Order reruns), I became fascinated with podcasting during its inception in the early 2000's. I began writing for Mashable and other outlets at this time (https://mashable.com/author/john-havens) focusing on the intersection of media, AI, ethics, and sustainability that led to authoring two books ("Hacking Happiness" from Penguin, focusing on personal data / quantified self / positive psychology and "Heartificial Intelligence" also from Penguin focusing in AI, ethics, media, positive psychology and wellbeing economics).

I was the first About.com Guide to Podcasting and led two of the largest "Podcamps" to ever happen in New York City where I drove a team of over twelve organizers to host these open source oriented events with over 2,000 attendees and 400 speakers that took place while Twitter was still in its infancy. This led to a job at Porter Novelli, a Top Ten PR firm, where I became EVP of Social Media and worked with brands like Gillette, HP, and Merck to help drive some of the earliest and most successful product launches our clients had seen to date.

My fascination with positive psychology started with my book, Hacking Happiness when I also created a non-profit called, The Happathon Project that was featured on the front page of USA Today and in outlets such as The Guardian, Mashable and Forbes. Happathon connected & accounted for people's physical & mental health via the output of their technologies (wearable and others) while honoring their data.

After speaking at SXSW for IEEE.org, the world's largest technology association, about my book, Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing our Humanity to Maximize Machines, I joined as a consultant in 2015 and led the development of a 700+ community of global experts focused on AI and Ethics. I drove the creation of our landmark document, Ethically Aligned Design and helped launch the IEEE 7000 series, currently the largest suite of AI Ethics oriented standards in the world. Our work with EAD has been used by the OECD, UNESCO, IBM and dozens of other orgs as the foundation of their AI principles, policy, and business planning.

I now have helped create a 400+ community focused on Sustainability with a program called Planet Positive 2030 (https://sagroups.ieee.org/planetpositive2030/). We are connecting the need to ensure all design prioritizes environmental and human flourishing at the outset of design, the same principles that should drive all AI today.