Earlier today I gave the Founder’s Lecture at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists conference in Newport. I’ve been working on the idea of ‘context sovereignty’ as a way to think differently about our relationship with AI, framing it in positive terms rather than viewing it as a threat to professional identity.
I wanted to challenge common defensive responses to AI (denial, retreat to “uniquely human” skills, or resignation) and proposes instead that professional value emerges from orchestrating human-AI collaboration through contextual control.
Rather than focusing on what AI cannot do, I suggested that professionals should control the context in order to shape AI behaviour. This involves three principles:
- Persistent understanding: systems accumulate professional context over time
- Individual agency: practitioners control their personal and professional context
- Cognitive extension: AI amplifies practitioner intent based on specified outcomes
I also shared the idea of patients developing their own AI agents with persistent health context, transforming therapeutic relationships into negotiations between practitioner-plus-AI and patient-plus-AI systems. Where professional value shifts from knowledge holder to trusted guide in collaborative meaning-making.
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2 responses to “Context sovereignty – CSP conference”
Hi Stephen. I’d love to discuss this further, mainly to see if the concept stands up to scrutiny.
Interesting shift in concept. Thank you. There is a general feeling here that generative and agentic AI will replace human clinical reasoning skills and the perceived need for the human touch approach in the health professions. If it is posible to “control” AI through context sovereignity, I will follow its course with a particular intention to introduce the concept at professional undergraduate level.