Everything you control, you control through decisions—and at work, decisions are the actual product. The next four chapters are about what a decision is, what your body knows, who you think with, and how to own one, and how AI is changing our decisions without us being aware.
16 Interactive Salons—You wanted more time to interact, you got it!
Much More Design & Build Focus—Including a two-part build and deploy an app salon.
New Art Installations—Including one you get to create on site
Same "Blow Your Mind" Talks
Same Great Food, Drinks, Endless Chai (y'all really liked chai last year...)
Same Amazing Community
See the full program here and all our contributors here (click on each to learn more about them).
It's mostly done, and we can't wait. This year's theme is Unknowing—we've written about what we think it means and where it came from, which was Jamer Hunt, on this stage, last year.
So we set ourselves a challenge. What is this new design philosophy, and what could it be?
We start Thursday by asking what happened to human-centered AI design, with two of the people who made it. Something of a reunion, and we expect some critique of the industry. We won't be filming that one. Then our opener: this year we wanted to hear from the people pushing and pulling on what AI does for us at the edges of reasoning, art, literacy, language, and meaning. We couldn't have asked for a better panel.
Friday opens with the heavy hitter—literally the man who has the math on what AI is and isn't—David Wolpert. It is not omniscient. It is alien in a certain way. It is most definitely smarter than us, but maybe that isn't a problem? We don't know.
Then the segue to Ubuntu, and an entirely different kind of awareness. We've been intrigued by Wakanyi Hoffman's work since we shared a stage with her in New York a few years ago, at a House of Beautiful Business event, and we're delighted she's making the trip. She's being called on by some of the big labs now, so this is another one we won't be filming.
The afternoons are where you get to play. This year we're doubling down on your participation through a series of salons: Chris Messina running a two-part product vibe-coding build, small-group conversations with speakers, coaching for founders from investors, working sessions on work and design, and walks to get you outside. Have a look—each will require registration, since space is limited.
Don't miss Caleb Scharf. We've written about him recently, and in our back and forth he threw something new at us: what happens when evolution itself evolves. Mind blown. We thought Blaise did that to us last year, and Michael Levin too. Now we have to consider that one of our most solid pieces of ground might move under us too. Truly unknowing.
Adam Mastroianni—we're very excited. Genuinely surprising, and what a counterpoint: that we are unable to discover. If you don't already follow Adam, get on his Substack now. Experimental History is one of the most informative, amusing, irreverent, thoughtful and honestly hopeful newsletters you will find. It's 100% human.
We end Friday with a pivot. We'll have spent a lot of time on what we don't know. So what does that mean, isn't it a good thing, and how do you stay somewhere you can actually use it?
Saturday we converge. We start in the real world—Oura, Microsoft, IDEO—and how AI and deep tech are new places to drive products. Honestly we have no idea where that session goes, but we know we'll learn a lot about what's really happening in the next zone of design. Then Kate Joyce (see her speaker profile below), who will have you thinking completely differently about what's the same and what's different.
We have whales. How AI can find entirely new and invisible patterns, and how to design for that. Agents, emergence, and whether we have common ground in the end. And more salons, including part two of the vibe coding, where you make an AI product for other people. As in: launch it.
Finally we close on the future. The young researchers and scientists reflect on all of it, and the mature designers do the same.
Kate Joyce is a photographer based in her hometown of Santa Fe and a resident artist at the Santa Fe Institute, where she has spent years working alongside complexity scientists. Her focus as an artist is on time, change, and ambiguity—the moments where things are caught in the process of becoming something else.
We first came across Kate's work while chatting with David Krakauer, head of the Santa Fe Institute. Over coffee at a conference we were bantering about what it is that humans do that AI does not. He mentioned that his colleague, Melanie Mitchell, had recently written an introduction to a book about analogies and the reason she did this is because she believes that analogical reasoning is indeed uniquely human.
Kate's book is this book. It is a book of photographs and alongside her collaborator in this project, photographer and writer Gordon Cameron, they explore how photography can expose entirely different worlds of meaning for different individuals. This is how the book works—on one page is an image, on the facing page is another. One from Kate, and the other from Gordon. Each is a visual analogy of the other, often captured months apart or across opposite ends of the globe.
I pick up this volume and find myself slowed down by the visual rhythm. Looking at a pair of facing pages, you realize you're witnessing a silent dialogue. The camera becomes less of a recording tool and more of a bridge between minds, proving that true perception isn't about raw data—it's about pattern, resonance, and shared human meaning.
At the summit, she will be diving into those very questions—on using photography, language, and design to reimagine meaning, whether sharing a conversation between two people or building a city for millions. And, weather permitting, Kate will take a group into the trails to explore the interaction between language and image making. (Bring a camera or recording device of some sort).
And tickets for the Artificiality Summit this October:
Don't Wait: Our standard price of $1,795 (or $2,895 for two) will end on August 31 and the price will increase to $1,995 (or $2,995 for two).
Don't Worry: We have updated our cancellation policy to better align with similar events and organizations. Through August 23 (60 days prior to the Summit), you can receive an 80% refund, and then through September 22 (30 days prior to the Summit), you can receive a 50% refund. At any time, you can transfer your ticket to someone else or you can apply the full value of your ticket to next year's Summit. You can see all the details on the Summit page.
Don't Forget: We provide a 30% discount for education and nonprofit customers. Send us an email for more information.
Artificiality Summit 2026
Join us October 22-24, 2026 in Bend, Oregon for 2.5 days with a fantastic group of speakers—academics, authors, designers, investors, photographers, and more.
We'll explore the theme of Unknowing—not ignorance, but a necessary release of inherited assumptions. We don’t yet know what AI will become, and we don’t yet know what we will become in relationship to it.
Unknowing is the space between—the place where neither side is fixed, and something new can emerge.
A heads up on our travels: We're planning to be in Amsterdam, Miami, Munich, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Venice (Italy) later this year. Some stops are for keynotes for corporate events...and some stops will be for an as-yet-unannounced Stay Human course + certification we are developing. If you've made it this far and would like an early heads up on this, just reply to this email. We've already had quite a few inquires and will be releasing details very soon. If you want to talk about this for your whole team, get in touch!
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Helen Edwards is a Co-Founder of Artificiality. She previously co-founded Intelligentsia.ai (acquired by Atlantic Media) and worked at Meridian Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, Quartz, and Transpower.
