Artificiality Summit 2026 Program

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.

What if intelligence is not a single property, but a spectrum of forms — biological, cultural, and synthetic? In his new book What Is Intelligence?, Blaise Agüera y Arcas argues for a radically plural view, showing how minds emerge through interaction, pattern, and scale. His keynote invites us to see AI not as an imitation of human thought, but as part of a larger story of diverse intelligences co-evolving with us.

Enjoy some of Bend’s local food scene, get to know each other, and get started on imagining.

Jamer Hunt, author of Not to Scale and inspired by the Eames’s film Powers of Ten, catalyzes our opening discussion on the concept of scale. This session delves into how different scales — individual, organizational, community, societal, even temporal — shape our perspectives and influence the design of AI systems. By examining the impact of scale on context and constraints, Jamer guides us to a clearer understanding of the appropriate levels at which we can envision and build a hopeful future with AI.

Kate on using photography, language, and design to reimagine meaning, whether sharing a conversation between two people or building a city for millions.

This session explores the evolving nature of creativity in an era defined by collaborative networks, cultural remix, and synthetic co-authors. From songwriting and storytelling to product design and AI-powered media, we trace how deeply individual acts of creativity are now shaped by broader systems of influence and information, and ask how new forms of authorship emerge when ideas flow across people, machines, and cultures.

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.

Provided by one of Bend’s favorite restaurants: Barrio.

How should we think about how we each individually are teaching AI? Giving us an accessible framework to navigate the enormous impact of AI upon human culture, values, and the flow of information, De Kai shows us that society can not only survive the AI revolution, but also flourish in a new world where we all play our part in a more humane, compassionate, and understanding society — alongside our artificial children.

Gašper shows his work on whale language, which was discovered using AI, and what that means for how we communicate with other minds.

What if large language models could change the very way we come to agreement? In this social experiment, Jenna Fizel of IDEO uses an LLM to help us co-author a vision for human-AI collaboration, shifting the conditions of how collective meaning takes shape. The outcome might be awesome, boring, weird, or something else entirely — but the point is the experience of finding new ways to make societal-scale decisions.

Two designers on what happens when the interface stops being something you touch.

A session for anyone who writes prompts, sets defaults or picks tools, on the behavioral consequences already in their hands.

A working session on coordination, failure and surprise in systems built from parts that each know only their piece.

A session on what the humanities already know about artificial beings, and why the engineering conversation keeps rediscovering it.

Finish the vibe coding project you started on Friday.

AI may well completely reframe what a mind can be. In this session, philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel navigates the blurred boundaries of consciousness, pushing us past quick judgments to reckon with the moral ambiguity of how and why we assume minds exist. Together, we explore the disorienting, uncanny, and generative spaces that open when meaning meets the machine.

Three researchers on convention, communication and constraint, and what coordination costs when some of the participants are machines.

What if we think of intelligence as distributed across the planet, biologically and technically? Benjamin Bratton reframes AI within ecological and geopolitical systems, showing how synthetic cognition, climate, and computation intertwine. A closing keynote that asks us to see planetary intelligence not as metaphor, but as the scale at which our futures will be decided.

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.

Provided by one of Bend’s favorite restaurants: Shimshon.

Scaling shapes the world we share, spreading patterns of thought, design, and culture across systems and societies. Jamer Hunt and Adam Cutler join Helen and Dave to explore how scaling can become an act of imagination: what values, practices, and forms of care we choose to amplify, and how human-synthetic creativity might point toward new kinds of growth worth multiplying.

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.

Open session for anyone building with AI right now, hosted by someone who works with early and deep tech ventures.

Moe on the connective capacities that weaken when the friction goes away, and how to put the practice back in on purpose.

A hands-on session with Judith Fan on thinking through sketching, gesture and physical marks.

Researchers working on representation, multi-agent systems and evaluation on the experiments that would move the field, and the ones nobody is running.

Jamer Hunt’s challenge from last year’s Summit, taken seriously, landed.