Hello!
I am Botao ‘Amber’ Hu—call me Amber (him/he).
I'm a PhD candidate in Human Centred Computing at University of Oxford's Department of Computer Science, supervised by Prof. Max Van Kleek. I’m a social computing researcher and experiential futures designer. I was also a cohort researcher in Summer of Protocols and ERA Fellowship.
Scholar: Botao 'Amber' Hu LinkedIn: Botao 'Amber' Hu Bluesky: @botao.hu GitHub: botaohu X: @bah_eth
If you're interested in learning more or discussing potential collaborations, please don't hesitate to interact with me.
Research StatementResearch Interests:
Cyborg Sociology
- Pillar 1: Trust After Autonomy
- Pillar 2: Reality Across Umwelten
- Pillar 3: Roots of Flourishing
Legend: Full Paper (Year of Publication) — Design Work (Year of Design)
Dissociative Identity: Language Model Agents Lack Grounding for Reputation Mechanisms
Experiencing More-Than-Human Through Human Augmentation
Is Decentralized AI Governable? From Regulative Policy to Constitutive Protocol
Protocol as Poetry: A Case Study of Pak's Smart Contract-Based Protocol Art
From UX to TX: Trust Experience Design for Distributed Autonomous Intelligence in the Wild
Allow Me Into Your Dream: A Handshake-and-Pull Protocol for Sharing Mixed Realities in Spontaneous Encounters
Artificial Life in the Wild
Protocol Commoning: Understanding Protocols Design for Digital Commons
Speculating on Blockchain as an Unstoppable 'Nature' Towards the Emergence of Artificial Life
Speculating for Epiplexity: How to Learn the Most from Speculative Design?
Leak from Otherworld: Mapping the Design Space of How Augmented Reality Reveals Itself
2025
What if you could feel your surroundings without seeing them?
2024
How Mixed Reality Objects Shape Intercorporeal Movements?
2023
Can Muggles Understand What It's Like to Be a Wizard?
2024
What if our language contained characters that specifically conveyed our awareness of body language?
Body Oracle: Exploring Somatic Hieroglyphs for Collective Bodily Awareness
2024
What if our realities became entangled with others' like fungi's interdependence?
Entangling Like Mycorrhizae: Mixing Realities Through Touch in "FungiSync"
2024
Would you choose 80 years of natural life or perhaps 100+ years of an artificialized life mechanized by protocols?
Cybroc: Cyborgizing Broccoli for Longevity
2024
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
Becoming Bat with EchoVision: Experiencing More-than-human Perception through Mixed Reality
2025
How Does a Collective Mind Emerge from Distributed Tentacles that Move Together?
2024
What if you could see others’ heartbeats while dancing with them?
Cell Space: Augmented Awareness of Intercorporeality
2024
If an immortal AI life could live forever in cyberspace, how would it find meaning or purpose?
Composable Life: Speculation for Decentralized AI Life
2019, 2025
How might an AI Life perceive our city?
City of Sparkles: Embodying Cityscape of Human Memories
Open-Source Mixed Reality Headset
2023
Why spend $3,500 on a HoloLens?
2024
How does AI think about Human-AI symbiosis?
EverForest: A More-Than-AI Sustainability Manifesto from an On-Chain Artificial Life
Delft, Netherlands
Royal College of Art, London, UK
Immersive Acts symposium
Boston, USA
MIT Media Lab, TeleAbsence course
Cambridge, UK
Cambridge ERA:AI Fellowships
Singapore
AAAI 2026
Hong Kong
SIGGRAPH Asia 2025
Bergen, Norway
CSCW 2025
Reykjavik, Iceland
IERR 2025
Espoo, Finland
Aalto University
Life, minds, and evolution are essentially computational processes.