A review of What Is Life?: Evolution by Computation, and What Is Intelligence?: Lessons from AI about Evolution, Computing, and Minds, by Blaise Agüera y Arcas
A conversation with Blaise Aguera y Arcas (Google) and Michael Levin (Tufts University) about two recente papers on the computational foundations of life and intelligence.
A conversation with Maggie Jackson, author of Uncertain
Flourishing in a Synthetic World
The Artificiality Institute guides humanity through its most profound transformation yet—living alongside synthetic intelligence. As a beacon of hope for human flourishing in a synthetic world, we illuminate the human journey into a future where identities blend, cognition extends beyond biology, and meaningful symbiosis with synthetic minds becomes reality.
Through inquiry, design, and dialogue, we shape a future where human and synthetic minds do more than coexist—they co-create. In this shared evolution, we extend the meaning of being human through story, relationship, and systems rooted in lived experience.
Originally founded in 2019, Artificiality was re-established in 2025 as a nonprofit research institute dedicated to shaping the human experience in a synthetic world. We are currently awaiting 501(c)(3) status.
We stand at an unprecedented moment—the emergence of synthetic intelligences capable of reasoning, creating, and potentially understanding the world alongside us. Unlike previous technologies that expanded physical capacities, today's AI extends our cognitive abilities, blurring boundaries between human and machine thought. This critical window presents a singular opportunity to deliberately shape human-AI relationships before patterns solidify.
Decisions, frameworks, and interfaces established over the next five years will set precedents lasting generations. Without intention, early precedents risk being set not by wisdom, but by speed. The race to deploy AI-powered products has created breakneck cycles—releasing tools faster than anyone can design, test, or even imagine their long-term human impact. In this climate, design often becomes reactive and reductive—tacked on after functionality is locked in. We believe that thoughtful design is not a luxury, but a necessity.
The Artificiality Institute slows down the process to ask deeper questions: What do these systems mean to people? What assumptions do they encode? And what futures do they quietly make inevitable?
These systems don’t just shape behavior—they shape meaning. Without deeper intention, we risk waking up in a world optimized for everything but us.
Our work rests on the principle that intelligence emerges from information and computation across diverse systems—biological, synthetic, and hybrid. By recognizing the shared informational foundation underlying all forms of intelligence, we identify opportunities for deeper interactions between humans and synthetic systems, fostering mutual understanding and meaningful collaboration.
Unlike academic research centers that prioritize theoretical explorations with lengthy publication cycles, technology companies focused on commercial capabilities, or policy think tanks emphasizing governance at a distance, the Artificiality Institute uniquely integrates rigorous empirical documentation with practical, real-time design exploration. This multidisciplinary, experience-based approach generates actionable insights immediately relevant to real-world human-AI interactions—insights often overlooked by specialized organizations due to their narrower focus. By bridging empirical observation and humanistic interpretation, we ensure our work directly supports human flourishing, cognitive agency, and inclusive access.
We think in decades, not quarters—tracking patterns of adaptation, shifts in meaning, and emerging norms over time. This temporal depth distinguishes our work in a field often preoccupied with the next release cycle or short-term optimization. By embedding long-term foresight into every layer of our approach, we help ensure that today’s decisions enable tomorrow’s flourishing.
Our approach is deeply participatory and grounded in the public humanities. We invite people to share their stories, interpret their own experiences, and help shape the questions we ask. These stories are not data points—they are evidence of transformation, containers of meaning, and seeds for more humane design. Our outputs—digital archives, interactive exhibits, multimedia essays, public workshops—ensure our work is accessible, resonant, and responsive to the diverse communities living alongside AI.
Rethinking Intelligence: Intelligence is a spectrum—emerging not only in humans and machines but across cells, systems, and networks. By embracing cognitive pluralism, we foster deeper collaboration with synthetic intelligences and expand what it means to think, know, and relate. We cultivate awe in the presence of diverse intelligences and seek to understand emergent forms of cognition with curiosity, humility, and care.
Reimagining Interfaces: Current design paradigms rely on human metaphors that synthetic intelligences do not share. As AI grows more capable, these metaphors fail to foster true understanding. Our Neosemantic Design framework moves beyond usability to build shared meaning—crafting new systems of signification that enable communication, collaboration, and co-evolution between minds. These designs emerge from lived experience and evolve through the dynamic interplay between people and intelligent systems—supporting the possibility of true symbiosis.
Reconsidering Human Identity: Cognition that extends into synthetic environments reshapes identity—making it porous, participatory, and co-constructed. We explore how humans and machines generate meaning, emotion, and selfhood together—shaping new models of personhood that reflect our evolving entanglement with intelligent systems. These identities are not static, but unfolding narratives—formed over time through reflection, interaction, and a shared wonder at what it means to be a mind among minds.
At the Artificiality Institute, our work is organized as a dynamic, evolving cycle—a flywheel of inquiry, design, and reflection. Each phase feeds the next, generating momentum and compounding insight. This ensures that everything we create is grounded in lived experience, shaped through relational design, and elevated through collective meaning-making.
Stories—The Chronicle: We begin with The Chronicle, our longitudinal, participatory ethnography that captures the often-unseen moments where human lives intersect with synthetic intelligences. These are moments of confusion, delight, disruption, and transformation—evidence of a world in transition. Participants are not subjects, but co-researchers and co-storytellers. Outputs include public exhibitions, narrative atlases, multimedia archives, and critical design briefs—each shaping how synthetic systems are understood and built.
Symbiosis—The Symbiosis Lab: Insights from stories fuel the work of The Symbiosis Lab, our experimental design studio. Here, we prototype systems, metaphors, and interfaces that foster mutual intelligibility between human and synthetic minds. Drawing from cognitive science, philosophy, AI, and design, we aim not for usability alone, but for cognitive partnership—creating tools that support co-evolution and deeper collaboration.
Synthesis—The Confluence: In The Confluence, our community-facing initiative, we bring stories and prototypes into dialogue. Through the Artificiality Summit, collaborative storytelling labs, immersive public humanities experiences, and influential publications, we synthesize insights that transcend disciplines and spark new imagination. This is where individual moments become collective narratives—and where understanding flows back into the stories we seek.
Together, these three programs form a self-reinforcing cycle: Stories reveal. Design responds. Community reflects. And the cycle continues—each turn deepening our understanding and reshaping the future of life with synthetic intelligence.
Without the Artificiality Institute's work, several critical opportunities may be lost:
By acting now, we can shape a future where synthetic intelligence amplifies human potential rather than diminishing it—but this window of opportunity will not remain open indefinitely.
We work with curious citizens, technologists, researchers, designers, educators, and policymakers who believe the future of AI should be shaped by human experience, not just computational logic. If you are building, studying, or navigating life alongside synthetic intelligence—we invite you into the conversation.
Co-founders Helen and Dave Edwards bring complementary expertise spanning complex systems management, design innovation, technology strategy, and artificial intelligence. They previously founded Intelligentsia.ai, an AI-focused market research firm, deepening their experience in analyzing and shaping human interactions with AI technologies. Helen’s experience includes transformative initiatives in critical infrastructure—such as leading dynamic customer-centered technology projects at Pacific Gas & Electric—complemented by Dave’s human-centered design and market strategy expertise at companies like Apple, positions the Artificiality Institute uniquely at the intersection of technology and human flourishing.
As the Institute grows, we will expand our core team with expertise in research, design, and operations, and launch a Research Fellows program to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and enrich our exploration of human-synthetic interaction.
Where many organizations either focus narrowly on technical capabilities or offer philosophical critique without application, we bridge empirical observation with humanistic interpretation—creating insights that are both conceptually rigorous and practically relevant to navigating the lived experience of technological change. We believe thoughtful adaptation matters profoundly—without intentional exploration of how we reorganize cognition, relationships, and identity, we risk building powerful systems that function efficiently but profoundly misalign with our deepest human values.
Writing and Conversations About AI (Not Written by AI)
