First, Philosophers. Then, Artists.

Theme: Value Shifts Towards the Source

For years, progress in AI was framed around scale. More compute. Bigger models. Stronger benchmarks. What is emerging now is a broader revaluation of where value actually sits. As execution becomes abundant, scarcity moves upstream, closer to what makes intelligence compelling in the first place. Human creativity, philosophy, judgment, and ideas. The source material that shapes how systems think.

Signal

A clear signal surfaced last week from Anthropic. As models absorb more technical labor, the company has highlighted the renewed value of the humanities. People who reason beyond mechanic into meaning. This was not a rejection of technical skill but perhaps an acknowledgment that technical skill alone no longer differentiates. Anthropic has taken this further by embedding philosophy directly into model development, tasking a human philosopher with shaping how an AI system reasons, interprets the world, and evaluates right and wrong.

The opportunity in AI is shifting away from the mechanics of intelligence and toward the material that trains it. As a result, the most valuable contributors in the next wave will not be those who use AI the fastest, but those who can take it somewhere unfamiliar. To the edges of its training data and beyond.

By removing the burden of mechanization, AI creates space for work that is deeply human. In doing so, it increases the value of what only humans can supply, perhaps more so than any other moment in history.

Summit

Welcome to our NY Summit, ElevenLabs.

Voice is becoming the core interface between humans and AI. That’s why it’s timely to welcome ElevenLabs as a sponsor of the upcoming AI & Creativity Summit.

As the complete AI Voice platform for enterprises, companies leverage ElevenAgents and ElevenCreative for better customer experiences and high quality content production.

ElevenLabs recently raised $500M at an $11B valuation to shape how people interact with technology through voice. More to come, see you in NYC.

Poll

Pulse

• Trends on stage revealed for our NY Summit: Artists, Aliens, and Agents.

• Doug Shapiro shares a perspective: On the ice thawing in Hollywood around AI.

• ElevenLabs released a complete toolkit for audio books: Create, refine, and publish using AI voices.

• The Wild Intelligence Immersion extends an invite: To a seven-day, nature-based lab in Costa Rica, led by community member Lauren Ducrey. Get 10% off as an AATM attendee using the code WildMachine when you apply to join.

We hope to see you in NYC on May 14, 2026, where we will continue these conversations on the forefront of AI and creativity:

If you’re creating something aligned with Artist and the Machine or you’d like to recommend work shaping this space, we’d love to see it for the chance to be featured. Reach out to us at [email protected].

Til next time,

Artist and the Machine.

xx