About Artificiality

Artificiality was founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. We publish a free newsletter, podcasts, and articles and research on AI. Our Artificiality Pro membership elevates our work, providing advanced research to leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI.

We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives. To truly grasp this transformation, our approach is rooted in engaging with core concepts such as critical thinking, logical analysis, and the scrutiny of underlying assumptions, principles that are essential in the realm of philosophical inquiry.

We have a love of wisdom. We strive to slow the frantic pace of debates around AI, down-regulating the noise so you can see stories in context. We explore the existential implications by asking profound questions about how AI will impact our human experience of existence, freedom, despair, and meaning. We untangle the tangle that is knowledge, truth, and belief now that AI creates artificial realities. We don’t accept the premise or promise of Big Tech and instead push and pull on the assumptions that drive hype about the adoption of AI. And we ask questions about how AI changes how we value aesthetics in art, science, and human creative endeavors.

We believe that for humanity to thrive, machines need to be made for us, by us. They need to be a mind for our minds. For you to thrive, we believe you have to know what you want that mind to do for you. And the only way to know is to learn what’s possible. Our goal is to make AI less weird, more accessible, and more human.

If we succeed, we hope to build a better world, where humans are not subservient to machines and their masters but seen for what we are: awe-inspiring, flawed, weird, imaginative, diverse, dignified biological masteries.

Who We Are

Artificiality was founded by Helen and Dave Edwards, a husband-and-wife team who have worked together since 2009. We started working in the AI space in 2012, bringing a human lens to a highly technical industry through our research & writing, speaking & workshops, and strategic advice. During the past decade, we have provided education and research services to a wide range of organizations including AI startups, Fortune 100 companies, top research universities, community colleges, and government organizations. In 2017, we sold our first AI market research firm, Intelligentsia.ai, to Atlantic Media, continuing our work at Atlantic Media’s subsidiary Quartz. 

At Artificiality, Helen combines decades of experience driving technology innovation across major industries with a superpower for identifying the next emergent scientific breakthrough that will impact our complex world of humans and machines. Dave combines decades of experience distilling and advancing big technology trends with a superpower for understanding how technology, design, and capital will shape our future. Together, we combine the sciences and humanities to help humans make sense of AI. 

We work with a wide range of corporate, government, and higher education organizations, including Capgemini, E.ON, EY, Galp, the House of Beautiful Business, Linn-Benton Community College, Lane Community College, National Head Start Association, Numenta, Montana University System, Oregon State University, Quartz, R/GA, Santander, the State of Oregon, The New York Times, and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.