Artificiality Summit Reflections

The second Artificiality Summit is complete. Twice the time, twice the people, twice the brain expansion. We are incredibly grateful to all who joined us.

This newsletter will be brief as we're still recovering while juggling speaking engagements last week and next week. That said: do not miss Helen's excellent essay that starts to pull together some of our takeaways (link below).

I'll begin with reflections that others have already shared publicly:

• "Three days of incredible conversations, amazing humans, and deep gratitude." — Tess Posner
• "I couldn't tear myself away from any of the fantastic sessions that you arranged." — Maggie Jackson
• "The Summit centered complex social systems. It held space for multiple definitions of intelligence. It focused on uncertainty, not-knowing, and multiple ways of knowing." — Charley Johnson
• "It was so refreshing to be in a space where friction was welcome, discord meant healthy debate, and the community held one another through the uncertainty despite our differences." — Sarah Fink
• "30 years of all kinds of gatherings, this weekend was very best by a mile. Was most impressed with how quickly (12 hrs? 8?) I felt like I was *part* of a real community. So much gratitude." — Jess Graham
• "It was a real community of intelligent, creative, caring and open souls who wanted to be in a space to explore, be curious, and build relationships with really great people - all in a beautiful and inspiring environment." — Rix Kramlich

And now a few photos...many more to come!

The Biggest Impact of AI Will Be on Our Minds, Not on Metrics

We've spent this week absorbing what we heard at the Summit, particularly from the philosophers and technologists—Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Ellie Pavlick, Eric Schwitzgebel, and Benjamin Bratton—who spoke about AI's deeper implications. If you're anything like us, your brain might have broken a little by the end of Saturday's program. 

In this essay, Helen starts the unbreaking process by pulling together the ideas, challenges, and provocations. As she says:

"At a regular AI tech conference, the conversation might revolve around scaling laws, hallucinations, engagement metrics, or surveillance capitalism. These four lifted us beyond that, toward a different way of measuring progress entirely: not in tokens per second or parameter counts, but in how broadly and strangely we can now define intelligence and consciousness—how many new questions we can hold open at once. Their work opened up the space again—reminding us how little we know, and how much more there is to explore. 

I came away with a deep conviction that we can value being in a dual state: one of "unknowing" but also energized inside all that uncertainty, so we keep thinking, questioning, and noticing what these new forms of intelligence are showing us about our own."

Read more...