Digital Dialogues | Art Basel in Miami 2025, December 5

Conversations | AI and Art: What’s Missing and What Comes Next

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Beeple, Artist, Charleston Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo, Entrepreneur, investor & strategic advisor, New York Emmett Shear, Tech entrepreneur, San Francisco Moderator: Alex Poots, Artistic director and cultural leader, New York
 

This panel brought together technologists shaping tomorrow’s creative infrastructure with cultural leaders defining how we understand and value art. They mapped the current state of AI-assisted creativity, identify what’s truly missing from both the technology and the cultural conversation, and envision what should come next. What happens when the medium can seem to think and dream with us? How do these tools amplify rather than replace human creativity? And what does the institutional art world need to understand about emerging technology?

Beeple is a digital artist whose boundary-pushing work blends technology, satire, and surreal world-building at massive scale. He creates daily images, large-scale immersive installations, and kinetic video sculptures that explore how rapidly advancing tech is reshaping culture. His work has helped define the modern digital art movement, appearing in major museums and global exhibitions.&nbsp;
Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo is an entrepreneur, investor, and strategic advisor focused on frontier technologies at the intersection of art, culture, and innovation. Active in digital assets since 2011, she has served as an advisor across fintech, AI, and blockchain ecosystems. Yu-Chi is on the board of The Shed in NYC and serves as co-chair of The Shed’s forthcoming Starlight exhibition, which brings together frontier technology and art. She was a Fellow at Harvard Law School, pursued graduate studies in the PhD program at Princeton University, and served as a Lecturer at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania. Emmett Shear is a co-founder of Softmax. He previously founded Twitch, was a partner at Y Combinator, and served briefly as interim CEO of OpenAI. He holds a degree in computer science and is an avid reader. Alex Poots is a widely acclaimed arts and cultural leader who has built major new organizations from the ground up – and who has inspired established institutions to reimagine their familiar approaches through more innovative, audience-focused, and culturally democratic programs. Alex was appointed in 2015 as the Founding Artistic Director and CEO of The Shed in NYC, following a decade spent creating, launching, and leading Manchester International Festival (MIF) in the UK. At these organizations, as well as at Park Avenue Armory in NYC, the Barbican Centre, and Tate Galleries in London, Alex has conceived and developed new ways for arts organizations to realize their missions – commissioning and presenting established and early-career artists across disciplines and regions, often in new collaborations, and welcoming audiences of all backgrounds to discover their work. In 2023, Alex continued his role as The Shed’s Founding Artistic Director and established a new kind of production house called North Star Studio.

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Digital Dialogues | Art Basel in Miami 2025, December 5

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