The theme of the Artificiality Summit 2026 is Unknowing. We start with five speakers—David Wolpert, Caleb Scharf, Wakanyi Macharia-Hoffman, Gašper Beguš, and Nina Beguš—whose work converges on a single finding: the uncertainty surrounding AI is permanent, not a phase.
Generative AI is perhaps the biggest advance in technology—ever. The world is rushing to find answers and for good reasons. We need to create good outcomes, not bad ones. In the rush, however, remember that Generative AI is way bigger than ChatGPT and the path ahead will be longer than the current rush implies.
Our recommendation is to follow a five-step playbook:
Diversify who decides and how
Dream of opportunities
Design for collective intelligence
Develop your own
Defend against disasters and delusions
Orginially published under our predecessor brand, Sonder Studio.
Dave Edwards is a Co-Founder of Artificiality. 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 Artificiality. She previously co-founded Intelligentsia.ai (acquired by Atlantic Media) and worked at Meridian Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, Quartz, and Transpower.
The skills that can be taught quickly can be automated quickly. What's left is the slow work universities were built for: helping people become who they are.
The AI Adaptation Cube maps, in three dimensions, the roles we put AI in based on the three traits: Cognitive Permeability, Symbolic Plasticity, and Identity Coupling.
AI usage is too complex for any single research approach to capture completely. We summarize and compare three recent studies: Anthropic's Economic Index Report, OpenAI's How People Use ChatGPT, and the Artificiality Institute's Chronicle project.
