Explore how synthetic systems merge with organic experience in The Artificiality. Follow the journey from information to consciousness, where AI evolves from passive tools to active participants, reshaping reality, redefining intelligence, and challenging the boundaries of human experience.
The Artificiality Summit 2025 will gather a diverse group of creatives and innovators to explore the future human experience. "This is not your everyday conference, and especially not the everyday AI conference."
Join us on October 23-25, 2025 in Bend, Oregon our second annual Summit.
The 2025 Artificiality Summit will continue to develop key themes and ideas from our Imagining Summit in 2024. In 2025, the Summit will stay grounded in hope because hope is action, agency, imagination and community. And, as with everything we do, the Summit will focus on the science, design, and human experience of The Artificiality.
The 2025 Summit will explore further:
The Artificiality
The Artificiality marks where human and machine converge through information and computation. After introducing this concept in 2024, we now explore its deepest implications: How does information reshape both artificial and human intelligence, and what does this mean for our evolving sense of self?
Intimacy: Meaning, Love and Spirituality
We're moving from harvesting attention to manufacturing intimacy. As AI learns to simulate understanding, love, and transcendence, we face a profound opportunity: to use these tools not to industrialize human connection, but to deepen it. By understanding where authentic meets artificial, we can enhance our capacity for genuine intimacy in an increasingly complex world. What happens to shared human connection and personal transcendent experiences when we try to replicate them?
Spaciality: Digital, Physical and Hybrid Spaces
We're building cognitive scaffolds that extend human spatial thinking through AI. What new forms of understanding emerge when we can physically explore abstract spaces? How do we enhance spatial cognition while preserving direct experience of reality? What creativity can we unlock if we can explore combinatorial and network spaces with AI?
Knowledge: Memory, Truths and Uncertainty
As knowledge emerges from human-AI interaction, we need new frameworks for uncertainty. Not as something to eliminate, but as the natural state of complex systems generating novel insights. This demands both psychological adaptation and practical tools. Can we develop new cognitive models that treat uncertainty as a feature rather than a bug of understanding?
Consciousness: Self-awareness, Reflection and Metacognition
Machines are being built to be self-aware because they work better when they know the state of their own knowledge. Humans need to keep pace. We explore how to enhance metacognition in both artificial and human minds. What cognitive practices emerge when AI becomes both mirror and mentor for self-reflection? What happens when machine self-modeling meets human introspection?
Minds: Mind for our Minds
2024 saw AI design evolve from novel interfaces to more sophisticated cognitive partnerships. Now in 2025, designers are grappling with AI's increasing ability to understand and generate design solutions autonomously. Experts explore the current state: How are leading designers balancing automation with human agency? What new patterns have emerged for making AI capabilities feel natural and intuitive? What principles guide design when AI becomes both tool and collaborator?
"Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart's full of hope, you can be persistent when you can't be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I'm not optimistic, I'm always very hopeful." ~ William Sloane Coffin
Speakers
We're excited to welcome the following speakers to the Artificiality Summit 2025 (more speakers will be announced soon):
Jonathan Coulton is known for his eclectic catalog of masterful songwriting on subjects from zombies and mad scientists to sad parents and dissatisfied software engineers. He’s written songs for The Good Fight and Braindead TV series, as well as the Portal video games, and SpongebobSquarepants: The Broadway Musical. He was the house musician for the NPR show Ask Me Another and is the host and namesake of an annual floating nerd convention called JoCo Cruise.
Adam Cutler is a founding member of IBM Design and one of the first three Distinguished Designers at IBM. He was responsible for the design and build out of the flagship IBM Design Studio in Austin, TX. For his Distinguished Designer mission, Adam is driving development of IBM’s point of view on the practice of AI Design. He gave a TED talk on creating meaningful human/machine relationships. In addition to leading the creation of IBM’s AI design language, he is providing artifacts and education that integrate AI, design and design thinking to assist others in bringing responsible, human-centered experiences to AI-driven solutions.
Dave Edwards is a Co-Founder of the Artificiality Institute where he combines decades of experience distilling and advancing big technology trends with a superpower for understanding how technology, design, and capital will shape our future. He previously co-founded Intelligentsia.ai (acquired by Atlantic Media) and worked at Apple, CRV, Macromedia, Morgan Stanley, Quartz, and ThinkEquity.
Helen Edwards is a Co-Founder of the Artificiality Institute where she combines decades of experience innovating across major industries with a superpower for identifying the next emergent scientific breakthrough that will impact our complex world of humans and machines. She previously co-founded Intelligentsia.ai (which Atlantic Media acquired) and worked at Fonterra, Meridian Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, Quartz, and Transpower NZ. Helen also serves as a Commissioner on the State of Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission.
Jonathan Feinstein is interested in creativity and innovation, specifically the paths of development of creative individuals, including entrepreneurs, inventors, artists and scientists. While it is common to focus on the moment of inspiration as the essence of creativity, he takes a more encompassing and organic approach, studying how creativity and innovation are generated through an unfolding process. His creativity class, which he has been teaching for more than twenty years, has enriched the lives of many Yale students. He is the author of two books: Creativity in Large-Scale Contexts and The Nature of Creative Development.
John C. Havens is an author, activist and consultant who specializes in the meeting of technology and culture. As Sustainability Practice Lead at the IEEE Standards Association, he is promoting Climate Positivity rather than just climate neutrality. Along with this, he is the Executive Director at IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. As an author, John has written influential books that address the intersection of AI, ethics, and human values. In his book, “Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity to Maximise Machines”, he explores how AI can be designed to enhance human life rather than diminish it. He discusses the importance of infusing AI with emotional intelligence and aligning technology with human values. His second book, “Hacking Happiness: Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking It Can Change the World”, dives into the personal data economy and argues for greater control and transparency over data. Both books emphasise the need to consider AI’s human impact, making them essential reads in the discourse on responsible AI development.
Jamer Hunt collaboratively designs open and adaptable frameworks for participation that respond to emergent cultural conditions—in education, organizations, exhibitions, and for the public. He is the Vice Provost for Transdisciplinary Initiatives at The New School (2016-present), where he was founding director of the graduate program in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design (2009-2015). He is the author of Not to Scale: How the Small Becomes Large, the Large Becomes Unthinkable, and the Unthinkable Becomes Possible (Grand Central Publishing, March 2020), a book that repositions scale as a practice-based framework for analyzing broken systems and navigating complexity. He has published over twenty articles on the poetics and politics of design, including for Fast Company and the Huffington Post, and he is co-author, with Meredith Davis, of Visual Communication Design(Bloomsbury, 2017).
Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her pioneering writings on social trends. Her acclaimed books include Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure (2023), which was nominated for a National Book Award and named an Amazon Top New Release. Her renowned book Distracted: Reclaiming our Focus in a World of Lost Attention (2nd Ed., 2018) sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of fragmenting our attention. Named to multiple “Best Books of 2023” lists, Uncertain explores why we should seek not-knowing in this era of angst and flux. Far from miring us in inertia, our uncertainty fuels curiosity, resilience, adaptability and creativity – the cognitive skills we need in a time of angst and flux. Winner of the 2020 Dorothy Lee Book Award for excellence in technology criticism, Distracted investigates the fate of attention in an era marked by fragmentation, speed, and hyper-connectivity.
As a Designer, Josh Lovejoy's approach is to address the heart of people’s needs, whether that’s through product development, fundamental research, or organizational practices. He is motivated by a restless curiosity about how our actions as individuals might better align with our values, especially those values that too-often "go without saying”. Josh currently works at Google, where he focuses on the UX of trust in personalization systems. Previously, Josh was Head of Design for Microsoft’s Ethics & Society team, led UX for Google’s People + AI Research initiative, architected Amazon’s unified design system for online shopping experiences, and co-founded a startup focused on eSports journalism.
Geoff Mulgan is a Professor at University College London (UCL), in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Policy team (STEaPP) in the engineering department. Before that he was Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK's innovation foundation from 2011-2019. From 1997-2004 he had roles in the UK government including director of the Government's Strategy Unit, director of the Performance and Innovation Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister's office. His most recent books include 'Prophets at a Tangent: how art shapes social imagination' (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and ‘When Science Meets Power’ (Polity, 2023/24). He has a CBE and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2020.
John Pasmore. John recently founded and launched an Artificial Intelligence resource, Latimer.ai. This large language model (“LLM”) was built to deliver accurate historical information and bias-free interaction for Black and Brown audiences. From 1995 to 2005, John partnered with music impresario Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam Records, to create Oneworld Media, Inc., where he served as CEO. Oneworld produced a magazine of the same name, a TV program with Warner Bros., and entered a multi-year custom publishing relationship with Hearst Magazines. John was also a co-founder and CEO of the venture-backed, video-based travel platform VoyageTV. He was a partner at the Family Office, TRS Capital, and several TRS Capital portfolio companies, including MovitaOrganics, an organic supplement company led by filmmaker Spike Lee's wife, Tonya Lewis Lee.
Ellie Pavlick is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Linguistics at Brown University and a Research Scientist at Google Deepmind. She received her PhD from University of Pennsylvania in 2017, where her focus was on paraphrasing and lexical semantics. Her work focuses on computational models of language (currently, primarily LLMs) and its connections to the study of language and cognition more broadly. Ellie leads the language understanding and representation (LUNAR) lab, which collaborates with Brown’s Robotics and Visual Computing labs and with the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences.
Beth is a proven market maker and global executive leader with more than 20 years of IT leadership and cognitive science experience. Previously, in her roles as Distinguished Engineer, Chief Data Officer, Chief Data Scientist, and Global Talent Transformation Leader, Beth drove digital transformation for IBM’s clients through the design and delivery of trusted AI systems. She made innovation with analytics & AI into a 2B$ business and intends to show the world that every human can grow their own AI.
In 2022 Beth started her corporation, Bast.ai, which creates software that allows everyone to build their own Conversational AI Technology (CAT). Working in the intersection of education and healthcare, combining semantics and statistics, she believes every human should have an AI protector and companion.
Dr. Shah is currently a Principal Researcher on Salesforce's Responsible AI Team. Previous to that she was a senior researcher at Google - focusing on AI Responsibility, Ethics and Inclusion in Google Search’s GenAI products. She cares deeply about - and has a two-decades long track-record of - advancing responsible tech design, with a strong commitment to understanding harms, abuse, bias, and unintended impacts of technology global populations that are often the most left out of tech discourse. She holds a PhD (2020) from Stanford in Tech Design during which time her work was featured in The Atlantic, The Nation, The Root and beyond. She has also been a speaker at the White House, UC Berkeley, Aspen Institute, the UN. and more. Dr. Shah writes, teaches, and speaks widely about the opportunities and risks of AI. She is hopeful about the possibilities of AI to improve life for everyone, including the most vulnerable populations. And believes that the time is now to set the course of these powerful tools in a direction that serves everyone.
Due to limited space, Artificiality Summit will be invite-only event. If you have not yet received an invitation, please submit your interest below and we'll be in touch.
Location: Unitarian Universalists of Central Oregon. 61980 Skyline Ranch Road Bend, OR 97703. View in map.
Opening at 5pm Thursday October 23.
Closing at 9pm Saturday October 25.
Super Early Bird Fee until January 31, 2025: $1,495
Early Bird Fee until June 30, 2025: $1,995
Standard Fee: $2,495
Fee includes all content, meals, entertainment, and more! Yes, you'll enjoy some of Bend's best food as part of your attendee fee.
Corporate sponsorships are welcome and will help extend our reach and include more people. Please email us at hello@artificiality.world for more information.
Request Invitation
Feedback from our 2024 Summit
For those who didn't make it in 2024, here are some of the reactions we received:
"Thank you, Helen Edwards and Dave Edwards for the engaging, diverse group you have put together. This is not your everyday conference, and especially not the everyday AI conference." Don Norman
“I will remember the Artificiality Summit, well…forever. It was more intellectually compelling than anything I can remember participating in.” John Pasmore
“The Artificiality Summit struck the perfect balance of rigor and playfulness, formality and informality. It was a dazzling event and a impeccably curated roster of speakers.” Jamer Hunt
"Still glowing from the conference, so much intelligence, but also kindness, safety and warmth. A humane and vital discussion of technology as a part of humanity and humanity as part of something much bigger." Whit Morriss
"From the beginning to end, it was a perfectly curated weekend of building connections, sharing ideas and having genuine conversations across science, design, art and the innovations that are expanding our future and imagining what can be next in AI." Abigail Snodgrass
"That was one of the best tech experiences I have ever had. I have been to all sorts of screwball conferences and big-name experiences. I even built a few. But yours was something different. It was intimate, humble, and curious. A little feisty, a little nervous, but completely authentic. On Sunday afternoon, I looked around and thought, 'THIS is my tribe.'" Dave Merwin
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Writing and Conversations About AI (Not Written by AI)
