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.
A future-forward, opportunity-focused gathering for people interested in AI, creativity, design, and knowledge.
Join us on October 23-25, 2025 in Bend, Oregon our second annual Summit.
The Summit will focus on “The Artificiality”: the emerging paradigm where the boundaries between organic and synthetic systems blur, driven by the fundamental role of information and computation in complex systems.
The Artificiality encompasses the reshaping of human consciousness, identity, and experience through our increasing symbiosis with digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and information networks. It challenges traditional distinctions between living and non-living, evolved and designed, biological and artificial, proposing a new understanding of life and intelligence based on information processing and computation.
The Summit will explore five key domains where AI is transforming human experience:
Intimacy: How AI reshapes human relationships and connections
Spatiality: The impact of AI on our experience of physical and digital spaces
Knowledge: Evolution of learning and discovery in an AI-augmented world
Consciousness: Shifting understanding of human and machine awareness
Minds: The emergence of hybrid human-AI cognitive systems
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
Artificiality Summit 2025 Details
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: Bend, Oregon
Opening at 5pm Thursday October 23. Closing at 9pm Saturday October 25.
Super Early Bird Fee until December 31, 2024: $995
Early Bird Fee until May 31, 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 also welcome and will help extend our reach and include more people. Please email us at hello@artificiality.world for more information.
Program
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Speakers
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.
Ellie Pavlick is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Linguistics at Brown University and a Research Scientist at Google. 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.
Corporate sponsorships are welcome and will help extend our reach and include more people. Please email us at hello@artificiality.world
for more information.
Contact
Email
hello@artificiality.world
Phone
541-215-4350
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