Reflections on the Artificiality Institute in 2025—and on where we're headed in 2026.
Congratulations to the winners of the Artificiality Book Awards 2025!
In This Issue: * It's Time for Better GenAI Design. More below... * What We Know Before Saying It. Helen
Our research shows that AI is reshaping how people reason, create, and form identity. We help organizations build cultures where humans stay the authors of their own minds.
We create live experiences that shift people from anxiety to agency—changing how people see intelligence, culture, and themselves as AI changes what it means to be human.
Audiences leave with:
AI is changing how people think, who they believe they are, and what they believe they can become. Culture matters now more than ever—because every change, including AI, runs through people first.
At the Artificiality Institute, we conduct one of the world’s only story-based research programs on the human experience of AI. Our ethnographic studies surface the emotional and cognitive patterns people follow as they adopt AI—from first discovery to identity-level integration.
The organizations paying attention to these shifts are already learning faster than everyone else.
Our sessions turn this research into practical, collaborative experiences that reveal what’s really changing inside your organization where people are already thinking, deciding, and creating differently alongside AI.
In our sessions, we reveal the patterns that drive how people think with AI. Using insights from our research and frameworks such as our AI Collaboration Cube, we help people understand how AI is changing our thinking, identity, and collective sensemaking.
Our keynote:
Audiences leave with that rare mix of wonder and precision—suddenly aware that what's changing isn’t the technology, but how they understand intelligence, culture, and themselves. Your teams will feel the shift from anxiety to agency, confident they can tell a new story of what it means to be human with AI.
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The Artificiality Institute delivers research-based speaking and facilitation that helps organizations build adaptive, AI-ready culture.
How AI Changes How We Think—and How We Become
AI is changing more than work or productivity—it’s reshaping how people reason, imagine, and form identity. Drawing on hundreds of hours of story-based research, this keynote reveals the profound cognitive shifts occurring as humans learn to think with AI.
We explore why this moment marks the end of the humanist era, how AI is altering our sense of agency and meaning, and what organizations must do to help people adapt consciously rather than reactively. Audiences leave with new clarity, shared language, and the confidence to design cultures where humans remain the authors of their own minds.
A New Framework for Work, Culture, and Leadership
AI is already reshaping how people work, learn, and collaborate—but without shared language, organizations struggle to adapt. This keynote introduces the AI Collaboration Cube, our research-based model for understanding the new roles AI plays inside teams and how humans and machines co-create, fracture, and rebuild workflows. Leaders learn how to design culture and strategy for an era of continuous adaptation, where cognitive clarity and trust are key.
Optional upgrade: We conduct 20–40 interviews inside your organization and integrate your unique culture and stories into the keynote for maximum relevance and impact.
Power, Trust, and the Human Experience of AI
AI is no longer a distant machine—it is becoming a companion, collaborator, and confidant. As people share their thoughts, emotions, and private reasoning with AI, we move from an attention economy built on distraction to an intimacy economy built on vulnerability and trust.
This keynote explores how relational AI changes power dynamics, reshapes identity, and introduces new ethical and cultural responsibilities for organizations. Leaders learn how to design environments that safeguard psychological safety and human dignity, even as AI becomes woven into everyday work, learning, and creativity.
Our keynote experiences are designed not just to inform, but to shift how people feel and think about AI. We weave story-based research, live conversation, and philosophical insight to help audiences see AI not as a technical upgrade, but as a profound human transformation already underway.
We interview 20–40 people inside your group or association and integrate their lived experience into the keynote—so the message reflects your culture, delivering maximum relevance and impact.
A bespoke convening that brings the Artificiality Summit inside your organization. We blend keynotes, guided discussions, research insights, and collaborative imagination exercises to help your teams see their work—and their future with AI—in a new way. Your custom summit becomes a shared turning point: a space where leaders pause, rethink assumptions, and design what flourishing with AI could look like for them.
We don't just predict the future of AI—we study how humans are already changing.
We’ve been working in AI strategy, culture, and education for more than a decade. Since ChatGPT’s release we’ve studied more than a 1,000 people—hundreds of hours of real human-AI interaction. We’ve researched their lived experience and from this we have built new frameworks and methodologies for helping humans understand themselves and each other when AI is a “machine employee.” We’ve built a new map of how humans and AI co-create, fracture, and rebuild.
Where others chase short term gains in workflow efficiencies, we build cultures that set organizations up for the real prize: new sources of innovation, creativity, and sustainable productivity gains.
Helen Edwards is a scientist–philosopher and Co-Founder of the Artificiality Institute, where she leads research on how AI transforms human reasoning, identity, and culture. She is a Visiting Researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for Human-Compatible AI and serves as an Oregon Commissioner of Higher Education. Helen’s career spans decades of executive leadership across energy, media, and technology—including roles as CIO of Transpower NZ, executive leader at PG&E, and head of corporate venturing for Meridian Energy.
Across these roles, Helen developed a reputation for identifying emergent scientific and technological inflection points before they appear on the horizon—and for translating them into lasting institutional change.
Her current work explores the cognitive and cultural shifts that occur as humans learn to think with intelligent systems, drawing on hundreds of hours of ethnographic research. Helen helps organizations build cultures that support agency, trust, and meaning in an era of symbiotic intelligence—and speaks globally on the science and philosophy of what it means to be human with AI.
Dave Edwards is a designer-philosopher and Co-Founder of the Artificiality Institute, where his work explores how AI reshapes
human cognition, creativity, and meaning-making. He is a Visiting Researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for Human-Compatible AI. Dave’s career bridges product leadership, venture capital, research, and cultural analysis.
At Apple, he led product marketing for the company’s creative software suite—including Final Cut Pro, Keynote, iTunes, iPhoto, GarageBand, and Logic—shaping how millions of people express themselves digitally.
He was also a technology analyst at Morgan Stanley, covering early internet and cleantech companies, and a partner at Charles River Ventures and ThinkEquity Partners, investing in and advising founders building next generation technologies.
Today, Dave studies how humans and AI co-create thought, creativity, and culture—and helps organizations design adaptive, human-centered environments for symbiotic work. His research integrates design, systems thinking, and contemporary philosophy to explore the deep question of our time: how AI changes what it means to be human.
Organizations that understand that AI adoption is fundamentally about people:
Recent collaborators include: Capgemini, E.ON, EY, The New York Times, Starbucks, Santander, Oregon Community College Association, Oregon State University, PLS, National Head Start Association, Transpower NZ, and dozens of forward-thinking organizations across corporate, government, education, and nonprofit sectors.
"With discussions around AI often centered on efficiency or technicalities, it was valuable to go deeper and discuss how it influences leadership, human systems, and organizational readiness."
— Brighid Kelly, Chief People Officer, Transpower NZ
"Helen and Dave delivered a uniquely engaging session that addressed AI's technical and moral complexity. Everyone came away more optimistic about the role AI will play in their business."
— Zazie Pence, The New York Times
“I have been involved in executive development and digital transformation for a number of years and can safely say that Helen and Dave's ability to make AI simple and accessible is outstanding. They break down technical barriers so executives can understand new strategic opportunities and the extent to which machines will change people and the way we work.”
— Paulo Pisano, Chief People Officer, Galp
"The fascinating thing about you is that you’re always at least two or three years ahead of what everyone else is talking about."
— Dave Copps, CEO, Worlds
“Helen and Dave have a unique understanding of AI technology, its business opportunities and its effect on people and society. They have a knack for pulling disparate pieces together in a way that helps people understand the bigger picture.”
— Kevin Delaney, Cofounder and Editor-in-Chief, Charter
“Helen and Dave sparked a candid and vigorous conversation among senior administrators from Oregon colleges and universities during their half-day session. While we've all been inundated with news reports and commentaries about AI, their presentation cut through the noise by helping identify key information and issues for these leaders to wrestle with.”
— Ben Cannon, Executive Director, Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission
“Helen and Dave have a unique ability to describe what it means to be human in the age of AI. They prompt an audience to think beyond the technology and to consider how technology can be both humanizing and dehumanizing. They are masters in translating complex issues into compelling, relatable stories, and theirs was the first presentation about AI that reassured me that, yes, we can do this, a beautiful future is possible with AI.”
— Tim Leberecht, Co-CEO, The House of Beautiful Business
