OxfordXML: Engineering the Digital Universe

Dr Sepideh Chakaveh invites us to reimagine our world as a layered, evolving construct built not from bricks and mortar but from data, information and knowledge. This talk explores the architecture of the digital universe—its foundational levels, from physical infrastructures and network protocols to platforms, social machines, and emergent digital societies.

We examine how data flows across these layers, becoming the lifeblood of digital experience, enabling everything from logistics to language. Central to this universe are social machines—complex assemblies where people and technology co-create meaning, knowledge, and value.

While AI occupies a vital position within this ecosystem, driving new capabilities in perception, prediction, and automation, it does not define the digital universe. Instead, it is one of many forces shaping its ongoing evolution.

This talk unpacks the engineering mindset required to responsibly and purposefully construct and steward the digital universe, and argues for a vision that balances computation with compassion, scale with ethics, and automation with accountability.

The session concludes with a live demonstration of real-world systems developed by the author’s company, showcasing how these principles are being applied in practice to build meaningful, scalable digital products which solve real-life problems.