The Futures Program

"The best research on what’s happening strategically in AI, bar none."
— Director, Fortune 100 Technology Company

At the Artificiality Institute, we focus on the future human experience because it is what drives adoption and change, success or failure. Today’s AI is powerful but adoption is being dampened by the gap between any model’s capabilities and the human experience. This gap will change and our mission is to understand and anticipate it. 

We start by analyzing the science and technology which tells us what is possible, over what timeframe, and to what degree. We then analyze the current state of product capabilities and designs with an eye to what might come next. Together, this focus on science and product provides our unique view of the future human experience which, in turn, predicts the impact that AI might have on individuals, organizations, and society.

Our focus on design is based on our thesis that AI success requires the largest shift in product design since the introduction of the GUI in 1984. Today’s AI products are limited by the use of design techniques developed for fundamentally different technologies. While the past 40 years of product design has provided methods to instruct computers through typing, clicking, pointing, and speaking, the future will require entirely new designs that allow for instructing intelligent machines—and for those machines to interpret user intent. The products that solve these design objectives will be those that truly alter the human experience, creating the accelerating change the AI industry promises.

Forecasting the scale of change from AI depends on the quality and nature of the human experience—in entirely new ways. Forecasting the computer industry was based on purchase price, quantities, and replacement cycles. Forecasting the internet industry added the dimensions of interactions and time spent. Forecasting the AI industry adds dimensions, including: memory, location, reasoning, and agency. Understanding the impact of these dimensions requires understanding how people will use these products. 

"The fascinating thing about you is that you’re always at least two or three years ahead of what everyone else is talking about."
— CEO, Leading AI Company

Guiding Our Futures Agenda in 2025: Ten Questions

Our Futures Program is focused on exploring and answering key questions about the future of the human experience and AI adoption. In 2025, these questions include:

• Spaciality—From Sensors to Stories in Industry: What happens when Pixar’s storytelling technology, combined with generative AI and digital twins, transforms industrial design and operations into a real-time, adaptive, predictive, and collaborative experience?
• Intimacy Economy: How will the shift from the attention economy to the intimacy economy—where machines deeply understand and even shape our sense of self—redefine monetization, privacy, connection, identity, and trust in a tech-driven world?
• Self—Reliance on AI: How is the tension between embracing AI-driven self-optimization and reclaiming unmediated physical experiences reshaping industries and products that center around experiences, such as travel, health, and retail?
• Trust—Strategic Alignment in the AI-Mediated Web: How can companies align their strategies with the shifting dynamics of trust and engagement on AI-moderated platforms, ensuring their brand’s voice thrives amidst rapidly evolving, Big Tech-controlled ecosystems?
• Minds at Work—AI as a Co-Worker in Redefined Workflows: How can businesses strategically integrate AI into interconnected workflows to reshape productivity, collaboration, expertise, and meaningful outcomes in the evolving future of work? 
• Frontier Knowledge Creation—AI’s Role in Innovation & Discovery: Can AI truly deliver a "knowledge explosion," solving humanity’s toughest challenges and transforming innovation, product development, and R&D, or will the realities of implementation temper this vision?
• Minds in Action—The Rise of Autonomous AI Agents: How are rapidly evolving AI agents—capable of learning, adapting, and even replacing humans in key processes—redefining software, industries, and the human experience of AI?
• Foundations of AI Ecosystems—Architecture and Adoption: How do the competing architectures of edge devices and cloud systems, and open versus closed AI models, reshape the economics of AI, and what do their usage patterns reveal about the future balance between centralized intelligence and decentralized efficiency?
• Creativity in Flux: How is creativity, central to the human experience across art and work, evolving as generative AI is adopted into enterprise workflows and in tools within the creative industries?
• Design Review—Shaping AI Adoption and Human Experience: How does product design, rather than just the "intelligence" of AI, become the key factor in driving adoption, shaping user experiences, and influencing the success of AI-enabled products?

The Futures Program: An Organization-Wide Intelligence Service

Navigating the AI transition requires deep analytical understanding and strategic foresight. Futures Intelligence delivers ten comprehensive analyses annually, each examining critical developments in AI through multiple frameworks. 

We focus on three core dimensions: 

• The human experience of AI, 
• Frontier products, and
• Relevant scientific breakthroughs.

Each Futures delivery combines empirical analysis with strategic implications, enabling organizations to develop sophisticated approaches to AI integration. Our predictive frameworks are grounded in rigorous methodology, providing decision-makers with evidence-based insights for strategic planning and innovation development.

The program’s hallmark is personal engagement. Each analysis is delivered directly to your team, accompanied by in-depth discussions and extended Q&A sessions. This ensures you gain not just analytical insights but practical understanding tailored to your organization’s strategic needs.

Some of our clients share our Futures program broadly across their organizations to build collective understanding of AI’s evolution. Others focus them within strategic teams. Both approaches are supported through interactive sessions and continuous dialogue.

"Helen and Dave have a unique understanding of AI technology, its business opportunities and its effect on people and society. They have a knack for pulling disparate pieces together in a way that helps people understand the bigger picture."
— CEO, Global Media Company

What you receive: 

• 10 In-Depth Presentations/Reports Per Year: Each report blends cutting-edge research, emerging industry trends, and real-world insights from the frontlines of AI adoption. Our goal is to help you focus on what truly matters. Designed with senior leadership in mind, these reports are accessible for your whole team, sparking conversations that drive clarity.
• Direct Partnership with Us: Got a quick question or need help interpreting a new development? We’ll jump on a call, no waiting required. Whether it’s breaking news or a deep dive into our research, we’re always here to help you navigate the complexities of AI.
• “Ask-an-Expert” Sessions: Book one-on-one sessions with us to explore specific challenges, unpack recent findings, or connect the dots between our insights and your team’s goals. We’re your on-call partners for making sense of AI’s ever-evolving impact.
• Discounted Access to the Artificiality Summit: Join us at our annual Summit, where thought leaders, innovators, and creatives share ideas shaping the future of AI and humanity. As a client, you’ll receive exclusive discounted passes to connect with this forward-thinking, kind, and curious community.

Ideal For:

• Executive, boards, and innovations that need decision-grade intelligence that need to balance the long-term trends with immediate priorities based on what truly matters in AI.
• Organizations seeking holistic insights that reveal where AI creates value and how people adapt, resist, or thrive in its wake.

Case Study: Fortune 500 Retail Company

• Challenge: The company faced confusion and polarization around adopting emerging AI technologies—especially generative AI. Employees were either overly fearful and resistant or caught up in the hype, making it difficult to align on clear strategies and policies while fostering creativity, innovation and higher personal productivity.
• Our Approach: Through our Futures program, employees received 10 focused, in-depth reports a year on AI trends, human-centered adoption strategies, and evidence-based foresight. Priority advisory sessions offered tailored guidance to help leaders and teams apply these insights effectively, encouraging both experimentation and alignment with company policies.
• Result: Employees became more emotionally and intellectually prepared to engage with AI. Fearful employees grew confident, while overhyped expectations became more grounded. This balance led to healthier, evidence-driven decisions about adoption and innovation. The company’s AI culture transformed into one that encourages creativity, strategic experimentation, and adaptability—ensuring sustainable innovation while staying aligned with organizational goals.

Extend Your Futures Journey

While the core Futures subscription is the cornerstone of an ongoing foresight strategy, each organization may need additional, more specialized engagements. We have three complementary services—all shaped by our central commitment to understanding the human experience of AI.

A. Executive AI Strategy Workshop

Quickly align boards and C-suite leaders around the transformative potential of AI—through a half-day session that examines not just the technical possibilities, but the cultural and psychological shifts underway. We tailor discussions to your organization’s challenges, illuminating where and how AI might reshape human roles within your business.

"Helen and Dave sparked a candid and vigorous conversation during their half-day session. While we've all been inundated with news reports and commentaries about AI, their presentation cut through the noise by helping identify key information and issues for these leaders to wrestle with."
— Executive Director, State Government

Key Takeaways:

• Human + AI Landscape: Understand how evolving AI capabilities are influencing employees, customers, and stakeholders.
• Opportunity & Risk Analysis: Spot the personal and social disruptions that could stall your AI initiatives, and learn how to mitigate them.
• Collective Prioritization: Through interactive breakouts, identify and rank AI projects that align with both business and people objectives.
• Actionable Roadmap: Post-workshop report capturing strategic next steps, ownership, and recommended interventions to foster responsible AI adoption.

Ideal For:

• Leadership teams needing immediate alignment on the human and organizational implications of AI.
• Boards wanting a concise, high-level view of AI’s human impact, alongside its business value.

Case Study: Global E-commerce Company

• Challenge: The board and C-suite were misaligned on both the opportunity and threat posed by generative AI. Major Big Tech competitors loomed, but the team couldn’t agree on a defensive or offensive strategy.
• Our Approach: We conducted a half-day workshop to explore forecasts, competitive scenarios, and human considerations around AI disruption. We guided leadership to identify which parts of the business were most vulnerable—and which held the greatest potential for AI-driven growth.
• Result: By workshop’s end, the board and executives were united on a new strategy that included a major shift in investment strategy. This decisive move was directly informed by the threat forecast we provided—and protected the company from the exact competitive move from a Big Tech player we had predicted.

B. Generative AI Immersive: Hands-On AI Decision-Making Program

It’s one thing to grasp AI conceptually but it’s another to work with it daily. Our Generative AI Immersive offers a multi-session workshop series where teams practice collaborating with AI in real-world scenarios alongside their co-workers doing the same. From crafting prompts to refining AI outputs, participants learn how to leverage these tools to amplify creativity, spark innovation, accelerate productivity, and offload mundane tasks—unlocking more time and energy for meaningful work.

"I have been involved in digital transformation for a number of years and can safely say Helen and Dave’s ability to make AI accessible is outstanding. They break down technical barriers so executives can see new strategic opportunities."
— VP, Major Utility Company

Program Highlights:

• Practical Human-AI Interactions: Focus on the everyday moments of friction, trust, and adaptation that define successful AI usage.
• Guided Exercises: Participants co-create with generative models, getting insights into where AI can enhance human tasks—and where it can’t.
• Cultural Transformation: Building a shared language for AI collaboration helps teams figure out what it means to use AI collectively.
• Measured Outcomes: We document emerging best practices and hidden pitfalls so that your organization can refine and scale AI adoption responsibly.

Ideal For:

• Departments or leadership cohorts seeking hands-on skill-building, bridging theory and practice.
• Designed for organizations facing slower-than-desired adoption of AI tools, we provide advanced, context-specific education to ignite usage and empower teams with deeper GenAI expertise.

Case Study: Major Utility Company

• Challenge: Despite wanting to leverage generative AI, the company’s traditional training approach wasn’t sparking real AI adoption. The traditional L&D approach focused on step-by-step tool usage, overlooking the strategic potential of generative AI in decision-making.
• Our Approach: Through a Futures Immersive multi-session workshop, we reframed generative AI as a decision-augmenting partner, not just another tech tool. Participants learned to co-create with AI—experimenting with prompts, interpreting outputs, and integrating insights into core business processes.
• Result: Employees left with a deepened understanding of how to harness generative AI for true business outcomes. Rather than viewing it as a transactional tool, they embraced it as a strategic enabler—spurring new ideas, expediting workflows, and ultimately paving the way for broader AI transformation within the utility’s operations.

C. Custom Research: Deep Strategic Insights on Generative AI

Custom research is most valuable when it uncovers what isn’t obvious or publicly available. We’re tech and human experience sleuths, digging deep to reveal hidden insights about the technologies shaping industries and the human behaviors driving adoption, so you can make smarter, more informed decisions.

"For businesses not inherently rooted in technology, there is perhaps no phenomena as alluring in its potential, inevitable in its advance and utterly terrifying by virtue of its technical and moral complexity as artificial intelligence. Artificiality addressed this exact complexity and everyone came away more optimistic about the role AI will play in their business moving forward."
— Senior Leader, Global Media Company

Key Components:

• Market & Competitive Analysis: Identify how AI is changing your industry’s human value creation models—spotting new skill sets or roles that emerge alongside generative tools.
• Human-AI Roadmap: Actionable plans detailing key collaboration points between people and algorithms, including proposed pilot projects.
• Nuanced Deliverables: Rich written analyses, including qualitative insights from interviews or user observations that bring human stories front and center.

Ideal For:

• Teams that already see AI’s potential but want deeper clarity on where humans excel, which tasks to augment, and how to maintain core human competencies.
• Organizations seeking a systematic way to document real-time human adaptation, capturing lessons that shape tech and strategy roadmaps.

Case Study: Major Industrial Company

• Challenge: Spanning multiple industries, this conglomerate had long-lived physical assets, extensive logistics networks, and complex software systems. Any AI adoption would be a massive undertaking—and yet they needed to plan for a future when AI could become essential to remain competitive.
• Our Approach: We delivered a custom research project that analyzed how AI might intersect with their varied business segments over time. With custom research, we highlighted key inflection points—when new technologies would likely mature and when the organization’s capabilities and culture might need to evolve.
• Result: Although they weren’t ready for immediate AI deployment, they now have a clear roadmap that lays out when to consider specific AI integrations, which segments to prioritize first, and what resources they’ll need to mobilize. This foresight allows them to proactively build relevant competencies and shorten future adoption timelines.