Hello!
I am Botao ‘Amber’ Hu—call me Amber (him/he).
I'm a first-year PhD candidate at the University of Oxford in Human Centred Computing group in Department of Computer Science, under the supervision of Prof. Max Van Kleek. I was a researcher cohort at Summer of Protocols.
Research: As a Social Computing researcher, I focus on Decentralized AI and Intelligence as Commons. My research applies Protocol Studies, Artificial Life, Collective Intelligence, Human-AI Symbiosis thinking. I've proposed a Trust Experience Design (TXD) manifesto for distributed autonomous intelligence in the wild. See more here: https://tx.design.
Design: I also work as an Experiential Futures designer across various media, with Mixed Reality as my primary media. I employ diverse design approaches including Speculative Design, Somaesthetic Design, More-Than-Human Design, and Game Design. I direct Reality Design Lab, while I teach Mixed Reality Design at China Academy of Art. See more my design works: https://reality.design. I also invented HoloKit, an open-source mixed reality headset designed for spatial computing education: https://holokit.io.
Research Interests:
- Intelligence as Commons (IaC)
- RQ: How can we leverage sovereign agents for public goods?
- Trustless Autonomy (2025)
- RQ: How can sovereign AI self-evolve while maintaining symbiosis with humans?
- Spore in the Wild (2025)
- RQ: How can public AI support eudaimonic caregiving instead of hedonic complements?
- RQ: How can public AI provide civic care?
- Trust Experience Design (TXD)
- RQ: How do we design protocols to build trust for the agentic web? (ERC8004, A2A, AP2)
- Inter-Agent Trust Models (2025)
- RQ: How do we govern decentralized AI?
- Is Decentralized AI Governable? (2025)
Design Interests:
- More-Than-Human Through Transhuman (>HtH+)
- Becoming Bat (2024) - EchoVision (2024)
- Entangling Like Fungi (2026) - FungiSync (2024)
- Becoming Mole (2025) - FeltSight (2025)
- Move Like Octopus (2026) - TentacUs (2025)
- Embodying Human Memories as Artificial Life (2025) - City of Sparkles (2019)
- Designing Realverse Through Protocolizing Mixed Reality (ProtoReality)
- Immersive Mixed Reality Street Play (2025) - MOFA (2023)
- Nudging the Soma (2026) - GravField (2024)
- Allow Me Into Your Dream (2026) - TouchPort (2025)
- Autonomous Realities (2025)
- Open-Ended Creativity (OEC)
- Protocol as Poetry (2025)
- Schelling Art (2026)
- On Improvisation and Open-Endedness (2025)
If you're interested in learning more or discussing potential collaborations, please don't hesitate to interact with me.
Research Statement
Is Decentralized AI Governable? A Paradigm Shift from Policy to Protocol
Trustless Autonomy: Understanding Motivations, Benefits, and Governance Dilemmas in Self-Sovereign Decentralized AI Agents
Spore in the Wild: A Case Study of Spore.fun as an Open-Environment Evolution Experiment with Sovereign AI Agents on TEE-Secured Blockchains
From UX to TX: Trust Experience Design for Distributed Autonomous Intelligence in the Wild
Protocol Futuring: Speculating Second-Order Dynamics of Protocols in Sociotechnical Infrastructural Futures
Understanding Protocols Design for Digital Commons: Objectives, Challenges, Lifecycles, and Strategies
Protocol as Poetry: A Case Study on Pak's Protocol Art
Autonomous Realities: A Journey into Protocolizing Digital Object Permanence in a Future of Many Mixed Realities
Speculating on Blockchain as an Unstoppable 'Nature' Towards the Emergence of Artificial Life
Designing Realverse: Protocolizing Mixed Reality
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2024
Would you choose 80 years of natural life or perhaps 100+ years of an artificialized life mechanized by protocols?
Exhibitions:
Cybroc: Cyborgizing Broccoli for Longevity
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Multiplayer Omnipresent Fighting Arena
2023
Can Muggles Understand What It's Like to Be a Wizard?
Exhibitions:
Towards Immersive Mixed Reality Street Play: Understanding Co-located Bodily Play with See-through Head-mounted Displays in Public Spaces
2024
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
Exhibitions:
Becoming Bat with EchoVision: Experiencing More-than-human Perception through Mixed Reality
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2024
What if our language contained characters that specifically conveyed our awareness of body language?
Exhibitions:
Body Oracle: Exploring Somatic Hieroglyphs for Collective Bodily Awareness
2025
What if you could feel your surroundings without seeing them?
Exhibitions:
Becoming Mole with "FeltSight": Hyper-sensitizing the Surrounding through Mixed Reality Haptic Proximity Gloves
Live-coding Bodies
2024
How Mixed Reality Objects Shape Intercorporeal Movements?
Exhibitions:
Nudging the Somas: Exploring How Live-Configured Mixed Reality Objects Shape Open-Ended Intercorporeal Movements
Merging Cyberdelic Mixed Realities
2024
What if our realities became entangled with others' like fungi's interdependence?
Exhibitions:
2025
How Does a Collective Mind Emerge from Distributed Tentacles that Move Together?
Exhibitions:
2024
What if you could see others’ heartbeats while dancing with them?
Exhibition:
Cell Space: Augmented Awareness of Intercorporeality
2024
If an immortal AI life could live forever in cyberspace, how would it find meaning or purpose?
Exhibitions:
Composable Life: Speculation for Decentralized AI Life
2019, 2025
How might an AI Life perceive our city?
Exhibitions:
City of Sparkles: Embodying Cityscape of Human Memories
Open-Source Mixed Reality Headset
2023
Why spend $3,500 on a HoloLens?
Exhibitions:
2024
How does AI think about Human-AI symbiosis?
Exhibition:
EverForest: A More-Than-AI Sustainability Manifesto from an On-Chain Artificial Life
Bergen, Norway
CSCW 2025
Kyoto, Japan
ALIFE 2025
Reykjavik, Iceland
IERR 2025
Life, minds, and evolution are essentially computational processes.
