Pitch broadly
Propose formats that invite participation: a method, a case clinic, a workshop, a provocation, a critique, a reading group, or something harder to name.
The program · Summer 2026: Palm Springs
A curriculum written by the people in the room.
Uncharted Frontier is built around a simple expectation: every resident arrives ready to teach, question, and change their mind. The result is a month of serious exchange—not a sequence of talks to passively consume.
01
Participant-led by design
Six ideas in, two sessions out
Everyone contributes to the room’s curriculum.
Every application includes six pitches for sessions the applicant would personally lead. An editorial team selects two, building a program that is rigorous, varied, and genuinely useful across engineering, product, research, and art.
6→2→64
Six proposals. Two selected sessions for each resident. Sixty-four distinct ways the group becomes more discerning and more capable.
Curate with care
Selection favors specificity, facilitation craft, intellectual generosity, and value beyond the resident’s own home cohort.
Capture the signal
A cross-cohort capture partner records the strongest claim, counterargument, and implication for the collective Outlook.
02
Research keynotes
Monday · Wednesday · Friday
Research in public, not celebrity on a stage.
Three times each week, a notable working AI researcher joins the residency with one focused provocation. The keynote is only the beginning: serious questions follow, then a smaller lunch or office-hours conversation with residents.
These are people with a live body of work and a particular point of view—not a parade of celebrity appearances. The guest is asked to challenge the room, stay curious, and remain in the exchange.
- Capabilities and scientific understanding
- Evaluation, interpretability, and safety
- Human systems, organizations, and adoption
- Power, governance, and public consequences
- Creative practice, culture, and authorship
- The questions the field is still missing
03
The weekday rhythm
9:00–16:00, weekdays
Protect the shared day. Keep the rest of life possible.
The core program is designed to create a real common rhythm without turning the month into a locked schedule. There is time for deep conversation—and time that remains deliberately unclaimed.
An unhurried beginning
Optional breakfast, quiet work, and informal conversation before the shared day begins.
A room-wide opening
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday begin with a research keynote. Tuesday and Thursday open with a resident seminar or a collective inquiry.
Practice and exchange
A workshop, case clinic, critique, studio, or structured debate led by a member of the cohort.
A long table
Lunch with the whole residency, a guest, or a deliberately mixed small group.
The working afternoon
Resident-led sessions, peer exchange, editorial work for the Outlook, and smaller office-hours conversations.
Integration and flexibility
A protected hour for reflection, projective conversation, limited pre-arranged calls, or a quieter kind of work.
Time that remains yours
Independent work, rest, the pool, dinner, and optional evening gatherings. The residency is intensive without consuming every hour.
04
One month, four movements
Week 01
Establish the record
What is genuinely true about AI now? The cohort brings evidence, lived experience, first principles, and the questions each field has been avoiding.
Week 02
Follow the consequences
We trace AI through infrastructure, products, institutions, research practice, creative work, and the systems that decide who benefits.
Week 03
Make disagreement useful
The room pressure-tests its assumptions. Critique is direct, specific, and generous enough to make competing views more precise.
Week 04
Leave a public record
Residents turn the month’s strongest claims, open questions, and forecasts into the collective Outlook—without manufacturing consensus.
05
The residency compact
A serious shared commitment
Be present enough for the conversations to compound.
- Remain in the Palm Springs area for the full month of August.
- Attend the great majority of the weekday core program.
- Continue independent work before 9:00, after 16:00, and during open weekends.
- Arrange known obligations and limited Zoom exceptions in advance, preferably during the 15:00 flexibility block.
- Bring curiosity, discretion, and a willingness to make other people’s thinking better.
This is a residential institute, not a retreat to dip in and out of. The point is not perfect attendance; it is enough continuity for a rare group of people to truly know one another’s work.
Next gathering
Summer 2026: Palm Springs is full.
Summer 2026 submissions are closed. Join the waitlist to receive the first invitation to apply for Winter 2026: Boulder, CO.