Yves Béhar

Yves Béhar (born 1967 in Lausanne, Switzerland) founded the San Francisco design studio fuseproject in 1999 and built a career on the idea that design is a vehicle for social good — the $100 One Laptop Per Child XO, Jawbone’s wearables, Herman Miller’s Sayl chair, and See Better to Learn Better eyeglasses for Mexican schoolchildren.

Designing AI for the people who need it most

Béhar became one of AI’s most visible design advocates through ElliQ, the tabletop “aging companion” robot he designed for Israeli startup Intuition Robotics, unveiled in 2017. Rather than a humanoid face, Béhar gave the AI an abstract, lamp-like form with subtle expressive movement — a deliberate answer to what he called the dystopian feel of robot companions for older generations. ElliQ went on to be distributed through New York State’s Office for the Aging to combat elder loneliness.

He has repeatedly codified his optimism into design doctrine: a 2017 Fast Company essay laid out ten principles for design in the age of AI, and his 2018 essay “For AI to be great, design must do good” argued that AI should help without intruding, never create emotional dependence, and reach those with the greatest needs first. He has since applied AI thinking across products from smart cribs (Snoo) to prefab housing.

Béhar’s position is not uncritical boosterism — his principles explicitly warn against AI that replaces human relationships or hijacks attention — but he lands firmly on the side of building: for him AI is simply a new material in the designer’s toolbox, and the designer’s job is to shape it humanely.