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

Join us in October 2025!

Please purchase a ticket here and we will follow up with details including a discounted hotel option. Feel free to reach out with any questions about logistics or anything else.

• Early Bird Fee until June 30, 2025: $1,495. Or Bring a Friend for $2,245!
• Standard Fee starting on July 1: $1,995
• 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.

Speakers

We’re excited to welcome the following speakers to the Artificiality Summit 2025:

Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP and Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society and founder of Paradigms of Intelligence (Pi). Pi is an organization working on basic research in AI and related fields, especially the foundations of neural computing, active inference, sociality, evolution, and Artificial Life. A frequent public speaker, he has given multiple TED talks and keynoted NeurIPS. He has also authored numerous papers, essays, op-eds, and chapters, as well as two previous books, Who Are We Now? and Ubi Sunt. His most recent book, What Is Life?, is part 1 of the larger book What Is Intelligence?, forthcoming from Antikythera and MIT Press in September 2025.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas

Google

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.

Jonathan Coulton

Musician

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.

Adam Cutler

IBM

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.

Dave Edwards

Artificiality Institute

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.

Helen Edwards

Artificiality Institute

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.

Jonathan Feinstein

Yale University

John C. Havens is an author, activist and artist who specializes in the meeting of technology and flourishing who is the Founding E.D. of The IEEE AI Ethics Initiative and Global Lead for IEEE's Planet Positive 2030 Initiative. 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.

John C. Havens

IEEE

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).

Jamer Hunt

Parsons School of Design

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.

Maggie Jackson

Author

Michael Levin, Distinguished Professor in the Biology department and Vannevar Bush Chair, serves as director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. Recent honors include the Scientist of Vision award and the Distinguished Scholar Award. His group's focus is on understanding the biophysical mechanisms that implement decision-making during complex pattern regulation, and harnessing endogenous bioelectric dynamics toward rational control of growth and form. The lab's current main directions are:

Understanding how somatic cells form bioelectrical networks for storing and recalling pattern memories that guide morphogenesis;

Creating next-generation AI tools for helping scientists understand top-down control of pattern regulation (a new bioinformatics of shape); and

Using these insights to enable new capabilities in regenerative medicine and engineering.

Note: Mike's presentation will be remote.

Michael Levin

Tufts University

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 Amazon Prime Video, where he focuses on the UX of AI for personalization systems. Previously, he was Head of Design for Microsoft’s Ethics & Society team, led UX for Google’s People + AI Research initiative, architected Amazon’s first unified design system for online shopping, and co-founded an eSports media startup called Giant Realm.

Josh Lovejoy

Amazon

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.

Sir Geoff Mulgan

University College London

John Pasmore 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.

John Pasmore

Latimer.ai

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.

Ellie Pavlick

Brown University | Google Deepmind

Tess Posner is a social entrepreneur, musician, and interim CEO of AI4ALL, a nonprofit empowering the next generation of leaders in AI. She served as AI4ALL’s founding CEO (2017–21), growing the organization to reach thousands of students nationwide, and recently returned to guide it through a pivotal period of change. Previously, Tess led the White House–launched TechHire initiative, was a Fellow at the Institute for the Future, and built Samaschool, a program preparing learners worldwide for the future of work. Tess creates music with a mission to inspire hope, empowerment, and connection to nature; her song “Volcano” won the 2024 WAM Gold Award and the Intercontinental Music Award. In 2024, she co-founded VENUS, a music showcase highlighting women in music. Tess was named one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics, co-authored The People Centered Economy: The New Ecosystem for Work, and holds a master’s degree from Columbia University.

Tess Posner

Musician | AI4ALL

Charan Ranganath is a Professor at the Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. He has been recognized with several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He lives in Davis, California. Outside of neuroscience, Dr. Ranganath is also a songwriter and guitarist with a number of recording credits, including a song on a feature film soundtrack.

Charan Ranganath

University of California at Davis

Tobias Rees is founder of limn, a small R&D studio located at the intersection of philosophical research, art practice and technology development. Limn’s main focus is on discovering and articulating the difference today makes with respect to yesterday: What, today, is so new, so different, that we cannot understand it with the concepts we have inherited from the past? So that we cannot think or build or tame it yet? Rees also is a Senior AI 2050 Fellow of Schmidt Futures; a Senior Visiting Fellow in the Google Quantum AI Lab; and a Senior Fellow of the Peking University Berggruen Research Center. Prior to founding Limn, Rees was William Dawson Chair at McGill University; Reid Hoffman University Professor of Humanities at Parsons/The New School; Founding Director at the Berggruen Institute; and founder and CEO of ToftH School.

Tobias Rees

limn

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.

Beth Rudden

Bast AI

Eric Schwitzgebel is professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of The Weirdness of the World, A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures, Perplexities of Consciousness, and Describing Inner Experience? (with Russell T. Hurlburt).

Eric Schwitzgebel

University of California at Riverside

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.

Aekta Shah

Salesforce

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Agenda:

The 2025 Summit will explore the Scale, Me, We, and Us of humanity's interaction with synthetic intelligence.

Thursday evening: Scale

Time

What

Description

Time: 5:00 PM

What: Opening & Keynote

Description: What if the most urgent design challenge of our time is not making better machines—but making better meaning?

In this opening keynote, Helen and Dave Edwards—co-founders of The Artificiality Institute and creators of The Chronicle—invite us into a deeper exploration of the human experience of symbiosis with synthetic intelligence. Drawing on years of phenomenological research, design inquiry, and first-person storytelling, they chart the emotional, cognitive, and identity-level transformations unfolding at the edge of the synthetic frontier.

Time: 6:00 PM

What: Dinner

Description: Enjoy a meal by one of our favorite restaurants in Bend.

Time: 7:00 PM

What: The New Scaling Laws: From Me to We to Us

Description: In AI, scaling laws are said to explain everything—from prediction power to emergent capabilities. But what about us? How do humans scale—emotionally, cognitively, and culturally—from individual experience to collective intelligence?

Time: 8:00 PM

What: We're Not AI

Description: We’re not machines. We move. We sweat. We improvise. We have bodies, rhythms, instincts. This session is about reconnecting with that—through dance, movement, and shared space. Don’t worry about performance or technique. This is about being human together, in motion. No rules, no stage—just a chance to feel grounded, present, and real.

Friday morning: Me

Time

What

Description

Time: 9:00 AM

What: Ingressing Minds: Rethinking Intelligence and the Self

Description: What if intelligence is not something we have, but something we participate in—a dynamic pattern, not a fixed property?

Time: 10:00 AM

What: Break

Description: Enjoy a conversation, talk a walk in the beautiful forest, let your mind wander.

Time: 10:30 AM

What: Self, Remembered: Identity in the Age of AI

Description: How is our sense of self being reshaped by synthetic systems?

As AI becomes a co-author of thought, memory, and perception, the boundaries of identity are under pressure. This session explores how technologies that predict, assist, and reflect us are also quietly transforming who we are—and how we come to know ourselves.

Time: 12:00 PM

What: Lunch

Description: Enjoy a meal by one of our favorite restaurants in Bend.

Friday afternoon: Me —> We

Time

What

Description

Time: 1:30 PM

What: Networked Creativity and Co-Creation

Description: What does it mean to create in a world where ideas no longer emerge in isolation?

This session explores the evolving nature of creativity in an era defined by collaborative networks, cultural remix, and synthetic co-authors. From songwriting and storytelling to product design and AI-powered media, we’ll trace how deeply individual acts of creativity are now shaped by broader systems of influence and information.

Time: 3:00 PM

What: Break

Description: Enjoy a conversation, talk a walk in the beautiful forest, let your mind wander.

Time: 3:30 PM

What: We’ve Invented Technology to Replace Us. Now What?

Description: What happens when the world outpaces the concepts we use to describe it?

This session confronts AI not as a technological development, but as a philosophical rupture—one that fractures our inherited notions of life, intelligence, and human exceptionalism. We invite you to consider the truly unthinkable: that we may be living through a moment so new, our current categories—self, society, even meaning—no longer apply.

Time: 4:30 PM

What: The New Minds Amongst Us

Description: What happens when intelligence no longer looks like ours?

This session explores the emergence of synthetic minds—systems that learn, adapt, perceive, and surprise us. As AI evolves beyond tools into agents of interaction, we’re confronted with profound questions: What counts as a mind? What deserves moral regard? And how do we relate to intelligences we don’t yet understand?

Friday evening: We

Time

What

Description

Time: 6:00 PM

What: Dinner

Description: Enjoy a meal by one of our favorite restaurants in Bend.

Time: 7:00 PM

What: Join a Side: Let’s Debate

Description: It's a secret...for now...

Saturday morning: We —> Us

Time

What

Description

Time: 9:00 AM

What: Imagining Institutions that are Co-creative and Co-intelligent

Description: Now intelligence is no longer exclusively human, how do we design institutions, governance models, and systems that aren’t just reactive—but generative, participatory, and wise?

Time: 10:30 AM

What: Break

Description: Enjoy a conversation, talk a walk in the beautiful forest, let your mind wander.

Time: 11:00 AM

What: Collective Cognition: How We and Machines Make Sense of the World Together

Description: What happens when humans are no longer the only sense-makers in the system?

This session explores the shared space of interpretation, decision-making, and moral salience that emerges when language models, algorithms, and humans try to build meaning together. We’ll ask not just what machines understand—but how that shapes what we understand, value, and choose.

Time: 12:30 PM

What: Lunch

Description: Enjoy a meal by one of our favorite restaurants in Bend.

Saturday afternoon: Us

Time

What

Description

Time: 2:00 PM

What: Just how weird could this get?

Description: A speculative and philosophical inquiry into the limits of intelligence, personhood, and moral obligation in an age of synthetic sentience. This session invites us to confront the collapse of neat categories: Living vs. nonliving, Human vs. machine, Conscious vs. computational, Moral subject vs. tool.

Time: 3:30 PM

What: Break

Description: Enjoy a conversation, talk a walk in the beautiful forest, let your mind wander.

Time: 4:00 PM

What: The Designer’s Review: Reflections from the Edge

Description: To close the afternoon, we hand the mic to the designers—not to summarize, but to respond.

This session is part review, part remix, part collective exhale. A cross-disciplinary group of designers will offer their takes on what just happened—what surprised them, challenged them, moved them, or made them rethink their own work.

Saturday evening: All

Time

What

Description

Time: 6:00 PM

What: Dinner

Description: Enjoy a meal by one of our favorite restaurants in Bend.

Time: 7:30 PM

What: Point of View: A Human Writes Back

Description: The Grand Finale performance.

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Frequently Asked Questions

• How will we gather?
  • We believe in creating an immersive experience for all. While we feature speakers, we hope and expect all attendees will feel like contributors to and participants in our community—not simply an audience. Our program is constructed to provide deep discussion with all.
• Who else will be there?
  • At our previous gatherings, we have welcomed amazing people from organizations such as Amazon, Bast.ai, Brown University, Columbia University, Cisco, DXM, Google, IBM, Inflection, Latimer.ai, M13, Microsoft, Oregon State University, Parsons School of Design, Salesforce, SAP, Slalom, Stanford University, SurveyMonkey, Starbucks, Tufts University, and the University of Washington.
• How do I get to Bend, Oregon?
  • Bend is serviced by RDM, a lovely, small airport in Redmond, Oregon which is 20-30 minutes from downtown Bend. RDM is serviced by Alaska Air, American Airlines, Avelo Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines.
• Can my company or brand become a partner of the Summit?
  • Yes! We offer various partner and sponsor opportunities.
  • The Artificiality Summit offers a unique opportunity to align with a movement that is reimagining the future of intelligence, identity, and intimacy in a synthetic world.
  • This is a gathering where thought leads action, and where your brand can stand for something more enduring than visibility: meaning.
  • Email us at hello@artificialityinstitute.com to learn more.