RE: Collaboration Is Not A Feature

Dear Thinking Machines Lab team,

There’s something profoundly exciting about what you’re building.

A lab focused not on human replacement, but on AI relationship-building — a merging of two seemingly disparate worlds that moves us beyond either/or thinking. Collaborative intelligence can only enhance our shared future. I imagine the pressure is immense, and the potential, even more so. You’ve captured the attention of a community looking for a new kind of AI story — one where humankind and AI seamlessly engage as collaborators and thought partners.

As you build forward, I feel compelled to say this: Collaboration isn’t a feature. It’s a value system.

And unless that system is embedded from the start — in mindset, design, and interaction — we risk building yet another tool that mirrors today’s urgency for profits and possibilities, but lacks our ethics.

Most AI interactions today are transactional. Command and response. Output on demand. We call it collaborative, but too often it’s just polished automation wrapped in a friendly user design. True collaboration — between humans or machines — requires something deeper: transparency, mutual regard, shared agency, and built-in repair.

True collaboration can’t be mimicked. It must be modeled — through intentional values, not passive observation.

Transparency, mutual regard, shared agency, and built-in repair aren’t soft skills. They’re structural requirements. Without them, what we call collaboration is often just managed task completion.

I say this as someone who’s spent a career leading cross-sector partnerships, building mission-driven systems, and co-creating in complex, high-stakes environments. I know the difference between coordination and co-creation because I live it. Collaboration is not a strategy I use. It’s a truth I operate from.

So I built a tool I wish more teams had because this is my practice. I deconstruct real scenarios and translate them into clean, usable resources. What worked for me, I offer to others. My hope is that this one helps ground collaborative systems in the values that make them sustainable.

It’s called the Collaboration Non-Negotiables, and it’s free to explore or use.
? Download the framework

If you and your team are committed to designing machines that collaborate with us — not just for us — my hope is this offers something meaningful to the work already underway.

And in the space between now and then, know that I’m cheering your rise. #FlyAboveSoarBeyond

Warmly,
Rebecca Densmore-Stoll
Founder, Blue Heron Coaching LLC
www.blueheroncoachingllc.com