Why Puzzles?

Built for This: Masculinity, AI, and Pathways from Harm to Accountability

Students and communities are living in a moment where three forces once treated as separate are increasingly impossible to untangle: the rise of AI companions and algorithmic influence on relationships, the pull of online radicalization on young men, and the ongoing work of holding people accountable for harm while still believing in their capacity to change. Professionals in this field are often asked to respond to each of these in isolation – as a tech risk, an extremism concern, or a Title IX case, without a shared framework for understanding how they connect.

In this keynote, Dr. Saed D. Hill draws on his work as the Harm Reduction & Community Support Specialist at Yale Health’s SHARE Center, his ongoing exploration of AI companions and human connection, and a consultant in online deradicalization, to trace the throughline connecting these domains. Building on last year’s conversation about AI and campus relationships, this session goes further, examining how unaddressed masculine socialization becomes vulnerable to algorithmic design, how that vulnerability can accelerate toward radicalization, and how the accountability frameworks used in respondent work may hold the key to intervening earlier in both.

Attendees will leave with a clear framework for understanding how these systems intersect, and practical strategies they can apply to violence prevention, response, and accountability work, no matter whatever form the harm takes.

Dr. Saed Deryck Hill, Ph.D. is a Counseling Psychologist and Independent Consultant, who specializes in the promotion of pro-social masculinities and wellness as a means of violence prevention. He provides trainings, 1on1 coaching, and strategic consulting on the topic of expansive and restrictive masculinities and has also been featured on several podcasts and other forms of media addressing the broad topics of domestic and global prevention, divesting from the Manosphere, and how advancing technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) is influencing men and boys online. Dr. Hill works with national organizations, school districts, higher education institutions, nonprofits, and other communities to train staff, facilitate workshops, design curricula, promote bystander intervention, and manage respondent support and alternative resolution processes.

Dr. Hill also advised the White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse in 2022, serves as a member of The Boys Club of New York City’s Professional Advisory Council, is the President-Elect for the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities, and served as the Assistant Director of Prevention & Masculine Engagement at Northwestern University for six years. He also co-hosts the Why Humans? Podcast which examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping the human experience.
Dr. Hill earned his Ph.D. from The University of Missouri-Kansas City and completed his Doctoral Internship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his spare time, he enjoys psychoanalyzing trashy reality TV, obsessing about fantasy football, kayaking, and attempting (sometimes successfully) to cook his mother’s best Guyanese food recipes.