A Reminder: Our current newsletter format includes a full essay as well as links to other essays, podcasts, etc. So remember to scroll down to see the other links.
So get scrolling & clicking!
This Week:
Esssay: The Summit v2
Essay: Why AI Could Coevolve With Us
Conversation: Eric Schwitzgebel: The Weirdness of the World
Something Entertaining: Third Seven
The Summit v2
I like to say that last year’s Summit was a bit of an accident. In our newsletter, we invited people to a casual gathering in Bend. Within an hour, I had an email from Don Norman saying, essentially, that he would be joining us because what we were doing was important.
There’s nothing like one of your heroes believing in you and showing up to make you step up your game. Thank you, Don.
Instead of gathering a few people over some pizza & beer at a local restaurant, we decided to host an actual event. We invited some of our favorite podcast guests, rented a space, and crossed our fingers.
It worked. My favorite feedback was from one of our most experienced conference veterans who said, “I feel like I just attended the first TED.”
Since last October, we found our footing in our mission, converting to a nonprofit to build something bigger than ourselves—something that will last longer than us. We published our first research, expanded our education programs, and started work on an AI & democracy project with our partners the House of Beautiful Business and Softcut Films.
And, this week, we open the doors on our second Summit.
The Summit is growing into a larger venue to support twice the people over an additional day of programming. This year, Benjamin Bratton, Beth Rudden, Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Charan Ranganath, De Kai, Ellie Pavlick, Eric Schwitzgebel, Sir Geoff Mulgan, Jenna Fizel, Jonathan Feinstein, Maggie Jackson, and Tess Posner will join us on stage for the first time while Adam Cutler, Aekta Shah, Alan Eyzaguirre, John Pasmore, and Josh Lovejoy will be returning.
People will travel from as far as New Zealand, the U.K., and Vietnam. We will enjoy almost 30 hours of programming, a new house musician, and five meals together —all in a space that begs for mind expansion. We’ll explore the possibility of a more meaningful life with synthetic intelligence, weaving through belonging, community, creativity, intelligence, meaning, minds, trust, and, yes, the artificiality.
Last year, we gathered to imagine a hopeful future. This year, we gather again to hope—but we'll need to dig deeper as the world is definitely worse. But one thing that's definitely better—and the one thing that can get us out of this mess—is community. And that's why we gather. Because there is no replacement for sharing time and space with people who matter.
Thank you to everyone who has supported, encouraged, and challenged us. Thank you to everyone who is making the journey to Bend to be with us. We’re crazy enough to think we can change the world. But we can’t do it without all of you.
Photos: Helen Edwards. Taken of the UUFCO on Oct 18 during our site tour.
As I wrote last week, read this. I'm always a fan of Helen's writing but this is one not to miss. Especially because it's the second of four on a theme of AI & culture.
This essay explores why AI—specifically transformer models—might be capable of genuine coevolution with humans, unlike previous technologies. Drawing on Stuart Kauffman's work on living systems, Helen argues that transformers learn something fundamentally life-like: the ability to model context-dependent relationships where meaning emerges from the whole, not just fixed rules.
Unlike calculators that follow predetermined logic, transformers capture "enablement"—how context makes certain outcomes possible—through their attention mechanisms. This creates the conditions for human-AI partnerships to function as evolving wholes, where each component enhances the other's capacity to generate new possibilities. Helen suggests we're witnessing the emergence of a new kind of cultural coevolution happening at digital speed, where the patterns we create together determine our shared future.
As I said in my opening essay, we have a new house musician for the Summit 2025. Billy Mickelson, who also goes by Third Seven, is a local Bend musician who defies description. We're thrilled to have live music at the Summit again!
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.
