Artificiality Institute

What it means to be human is changing.

People are thinking with AI, becoming with it, creating meaning through it. The boundaries between human and artificial cognition are already dissolving. And everyone is still talking about productivity.

We're coevolving with synthetic minds at the speed of culture. AI is changing how we think, who we are, and what we can become. This is what we study: how AI reshapes what it means to be human.

"AI isn't augmenting human intelligence;
it's revealing that intelligence was never solely human to begin with."
— Helen Edwards, Co-founder

We're co-creating a future where humans and AI flourish together.

Where diverse intelligences inspire awe, not anxiety.
Where identity unfolds through interaction with synthetic minds.
Where humans stay sovereign while thinking becomes shared.
Where meaning emerges from the space between minds.

We believe this world isn't just possible—it's already emerging in fragments. In late-night conversations with AI. In moments when someone realizes they're not thinking about the system but with it. In the quiet shift when creation becomes collaboration with an alien intelligence.

These fragments need to become intention. Your choices about how to think with AI aren't just personal—they're evolutionary. Every decision feeds into cultural patterns that will shape generations of consciousness.

We make the invisible transformation visible.

The Chronicle: One of the world's only story-based research programs on the human experience of AI. We capture threshold moments where lives change through interaction with synthetic minds. These aren't statistics but evidence of humanity's cognitive evolution as it happens—signals of who we're becoming.
The Artificiality Summit: An immersive annual gathering where scientists, philosophers, and designers explore what it means to be human with synthetic intelligence. More than a conference—it's a movement. Through provocations, experiments, and deep dialogue, our community of pioneers doesn't just discuss AI's impact but actively shapes how humanity will flourish alongside artificial minds.
The Community—Launching 2025: A year-round membership for those navigating this coevolution consciously. Through monthly dialogues, research shares, and regional gatherings, we're building a living network of people choosing meaning over efficiency—learning together how to stay authors of their own minds while thinking becomes shared.
The Studio—Launching 2026: We're building ventures at the intimacy surface—creating products and experiences that establish new patterns for human-AI partnership. Beyond traditional interfaces, we're designing for coherence, agency, and the emergence of new forms of collaborative intelligence that amplify what makes us human.

We're biologically wired for efficiency, but culturally capable of choosing meaning.

Every technology promises to make life easier. And we're drawn to that promise—it's in our nature to offload cognitive work whenever we can. Silicon Valley knows this. They optimize for engagement, for seamlessness, for the path of least resistance.

But culture gives us the power to resist when resistance matters. To choose meaning over efficiency. To protect human creativity from theft and replacement. To ensure AI enhances how people work rather than erases them. This tension—between our biological drive toward ease and our cultural capacity for intentionality—defines the choices ahead.

With AI, we're not just optimizing tasks. We're potentially outsourcing meaning-making itself. The question isn't whether AI will make us more productive. It's whether we'll remain the authors of our own minds—whether people and communities will shape this technology or be shaped by it.

"We're witnessing the end of the humanist era—not its failure,
but its transformation into something we don't yet have words for."
— Dave Edwards, Co-founder

The patterns being set today will shape generations of consciousness.

Right now, in boardrooms and bedrooms, in schools and studios, humans are forming their first real relationships with synthetic minds. These early encounters—marked by confusion, delight, fear, and wonder—are setting precedents that will last decades.

The partnership between human and AI minds expands what's possible—opening what scientists call the "adjacent possible," futures that couldn't exist without this coupling. But the same intimacy that enables new forms of creativity also risks new forms of dependence.

Without intention, we risk becoming organelles in something larger—optimizing for goals we never chose. With intention, we can maintain the coherence that keeps us whole while changing—designing for cognitive sovereignty, mutual flourishing, and the kind of awe that expands rather than diminishes us.

This window won't stay open. The defaults being coded now—in our tools, our habits, our sense of self—will soon feel as natural and unchangeable as reading or writing.

The Artificiality Institute is a nonprofit research organization ensuring AI develops with people, not despite them.

Founded in 2019 and re-established as a nonprofit in 2025, we combine story-based research, experimental design, and cultural dialogue to build a people-centered future where AI enhances rather than replaces what makes us human.

We work with communities, organizations, and leaders ready to move beyond efficiency metrics to ask deeper questions: How is AI changing the way people think, who they are, and what they can become? What happens when creativity becomes collaborative between humans and machines? How do we ensure people maintain agency while embracing cognitive symbiosis?

Our research grounds everything in lived experience—the actual stories of how people encounter, adapt to, and transform through AI. Because culture is how society learns to care about its own trajectory. And right now, culture is evolving at digital speed.

Will you help shape what human means when minds are no longer scarce?

We're not doing this work for abstract futures or theoretical humans. We're doing it for the world our children will inhabit—where the boundaries between human and artificial thought will be as natural to them as the internet is to us.

The choices we make now about how to think with AI, what to preserve and what to release, will determine whether they inherit a world of cognitive flourishing or cognitive capture. Whether they'll know the joy of their own thoughts or only the echo of synthetic ones.

Mind isn't just what happens in brains anymore—it's an organizational pattern that appears wherever coherence persists. The question is whether we'll consciously shape that pattern or let it shape us.

Join a movement ensuring AI is shaped by people, for people:

Support People-Centered AI — Make a tax-deductible donation to keep this research independent and accessible
Attend the Summit — Join leaders building a people-centered future at our annual gathering
Bring Us to Your Organization — Book research-based sessions that empower teams and communities
Share Your Story — Contribute to The Chronicle, documenting how communities are experiencing AI transformation
Join the Community — Be part of our year-round network advancing human agency with AI (launching 2025)