Helen Edwards

There’s no point inventing the most intelligent technology ever if it doesn’t make us smarter.

Helen Edwards co-founded the Artificiality Institute, a nonprofit that helps people stay human in the age of AI. For over a decade she has studied how AI changes the way we think, who we become, and what we're able to notice about either. She's a Visiting Researcher at UC Berkeley's Center for Human-Compatible AI and member of the advisory board of ARIA, the NSF funded research partnership developing context aware, personal AI.

Before this she co-founded Intelligentsia.ai, the AI research firm acquired by Atlantic Media. Earlier she was CIO of New Zealand's national grid, with executive roles at Pacific Gas & Electric and Fonterra.

Her research is story-based: what people actually do with these tools, told by the people doing it. It's the reason the summit stays anchored to something real. Her online, living book that comes out of the research—Stay Human: Authoring Your Mind in the AI Age—helps people navigate the deep tension with AI; namely what thinking to offload to a machine and what to keep your own.

You'll take away: the research on how AI changes people, from someone who is still asking whether it's worth it — and who thinks you get to decide.