The Artificiality Summit
Artificiality Summit 2026 Program
Three days in Bend, Oregon — October 22–24, 2026.
Keynotes, conversations, salons, meals, and more.
Thursday · October 22
5:00pm
Gathering
5:30pm
Dinner
7:00pm – 7:30pm
Opening — Minds For Our Minds
Keynote (traditional)
The Couch (main auditorium)
7:30pm – 8:00pm
What Design Knows Now
Fireside duo
The Couch (main auditorium)
Two of the people who helped start the modern push for human-centered AI design compare notes on what the field has learned, and what it got wrong, since they wrote the first playbook.
8:00pm – 9:00pm
Common Ground
Panel
The Couch (main auditorium)
Whether humans and machines can ever converge on shared meaning, taken up by researchers who study how conventions form between people, between species, and now between agents.
Friday · October 23
9:00am – 10:00am
No Free Lunch, No Omniscience
Keynote (traditional)
The Couch (main auditorium)
Why the intelligence gap between us and these machines is structural, and closes for nobody, no matter how much compute arrives or how smart the agents are.
10:00am
Break
10:30am – 11:15am
I Am Because We Are
Fireside solo
The Couch (main auditorium)
An Ubuntu scholar on personhood as a relation rather than a property, and what changes when you ask what a system does to relationships instead of which values it aligns to.
11:15am – 12:00pm
Connected and Inconsequential
Fireside solo
The Couch (main auditorium)
To Be Announced
How do we stay connected and matter to each other when machines offer easy intimacy?
12:00pm
Lunch
1:30pm – 2:30pm
In parallel — choose one
1:30pm – 2:30pm
Calibrated Doubt
Parallel session
The Conference Room
How to build an interface that tells the truth about its own reliability, and whether users would even want one.
1:30pm – 2:30pm
Feminine Technology
Parallel session
The Couch (main auditorium)
A provocation on building technology rooted in care, connection, expression, and accountability–software as a home-cooked meal.
1:30pm – 2:30pm
How Machines Carve Up The World
Parallel session
The Green Room
A provocation on the abstractions AI systems use to represent reality, and a discussion on what those choices leave out.
1:30pm – 2:30pm
The Wisdom Of Being Unsure
Parallel session
The Library
Maggie makes the case that not-knowing is a cognitive capability, then the salon works on how to protect it.
1:30pm – 2:30pm
Everyone Can Build Now, Part 1
Parallel session
The Communal Table
Chris has hunted more products than anyone alive. This is your chance to work with him in person and run a complete sequence, from ideation, to design sketches, to implementation, to launch plan — all in one go.
2:30pm
Break
3:15pm – 4:15pm
Deeply Human Discovery
Fireside solo
The Couch (main auditorium)
An astrobiologist who moves between exoplanets, the origins of life, our cosmic significance and the co-evolution of humans and their data, on what stays deeply human in the act of finding out.
4:15pm
Break
4:30pm – 5:30pm
In parallel — choose one
4:30pm – 5:30pm
Thinking Out Loud, Outdoors (weather permitting)
Parallel session
The Trails
Wolpert takes questions on the move, from thermodynamics of computation to whether prediction has a ceiling.
4:30pm – 5:30pm
Around The Table
Parallel session
The Library
An open conversation on relational personhood, Ubuntu and what these ideas ask of the big labs building AI.
4:30pm – 5:30pm
Will Creativity Survive AI?
Parallel session
The Stage
A deep discussion on creativity as a human right and how it survives this moment.
4:30pm – 5:30pm
What Investors Are Actually Buying
Parallel session
The Communal Table
To Be Announced
This hour is about the questions behind the questions investors ask.
5:30pm
Dinner
7:00pm – 8:00pm
Discovering Things Is A Bad Idea (In The Short Term)
Keynote (traditional)
The Couch (main auditorium)
Discovery requires doing what your brain evolved not to do. Adam Mastroianni on our built-in barriers, and whether AI can help.
8:00pm – 8:45pm
Unknowing As A Verb
Fireside duo
The Couch (main auditorium)
A designer, a writer and two researchers on what it takes to stay in the question when everything around you is optimized for answers.
Saturday · October 24
9:00am – 10:00am
Designing for the Human We’re Becoming
Fireside duo
The Couch (main auditorium)
What should we be designing for as technology becomes increasingly embedded in our bodies, decisions and everyday lives? A conversation across health, technology and design.
10:00am
Break
10:30am – 11:15am
The Subtlety of Sameness
Keynote (traditional)
The Couch (main auditorium)
Kate on using photography, language, and design to reimagine meaning, whether sharing a conversation between two people or building a city for millions.
11:15am – 12:00pm
The Sketch Is The Thought
Keynote (traditional)
The Couch (main auditorium)
Judi’s cognitive science on how drawing, diagramming and external marks are part of thinking rather than a record of it, and what it means for AI.
12:00pm
Lunch
1:00pm – 1:45pm
Whale Speak
Keynote (traditional)
The Couch (main auditorium)
Gašper shows his work on whale language, which was discovered using AI, and what that means for how we communicate with other minds.
1:45pm – 2:45pm
In parallel — choose one
1:45pm – 2:45pm
Interfaces Without Hands
Parallel session
The Couch (main auditorium)
Designing for interactions beyond the keyboard. Thinking about robotics, multimodality and social relationships as design materials for AI.
1:45pm – 2:45pm
What Do You Mean By Steer?
Parallel session
The Conference Room
A session on the metaphors we use to control models, the spaces they create, and what we'd design if we picked different ones.
1:45pm – 2:45pm
When Agents Meet Agents
Parallel session
The Green Room
A working session on coordination, failure and surprise in systems built from parts that each know only their piece.
1:45pm – 2:45pm
Fiction Got Here First
Parallel session
The Library
A session on what the humanities already know about artificial beings, and why the engineering conversation keeps rediscovering it.
1:45pm – 2:45pm
Everyone Can Build Now, Part 2
Parallel session
The Communal Table
Finish the vibe coding project you started on Friday.
2:45pm
Break
3:15pm – 4:15pm
Common Ground Is Built, Not Found
Fireside duo
Three researchers on convention, communication and constraint, and what coordination costs when some of the participants are machines.
4:15pm – 4:30pm
The Work That Grows You
Keynote (traditional)
Irreducible work is the work that develops the person doing it, and the IRX is a measure of how much of it any occupation contains.
4:30pm – 5:30pm
In parallel — choose one
4:30pm – 5:30pm
A Photographer’s Walk (weather permitting)
Parallel session
The Trails
Kate takes a group into the trails to explore the interaction between language and image making. Bring a camera or recording device of some sort.
4:30pm – 5:30pm
Bring Your Hard Problem
Parallel session
The Couch (main auditorium)
Open session for anyone building with AI right now, hosted by someone who works with early and deep tech ventures.
4:30pm – 5:30pm
Use It Or Lose It
Parallel session
The Library
Moe on the connective capacities that weaken when the friction goes away, and how to put the practice back in on purpose.
4:30pm – 5:30pm
Draw It, Don’t Describe It
Parallel session
The Communal Table
A hands-on session with Judith Fan on thinking through sketching, gesture and physical marks.
5:30pm
Dinner
7:00pm – 7:45pm
What Would Actually Settle These Questions
Panel
The Couch (main auditorium)
Researchers working on representation, multi-agent systems and evaluation on the experiments that would move the field, and the ones nobody is running.
7:45pm – 8:30pm
Design Theory Starting From Unknowing
Panel
The Couch (main auditorium)
Jamer Hunt’s challenge from last year’s Summit, taken seriously, landed.
8:30pm – 8:45pm