In Conversation with Prof. Phanish Puranam

Phanish Puranam, Roland Berger Chaired Professor at INSEAD, joins British painter and digital artist Peter Macdonald for an in-depth conversation, chaired by Dr. Anna Dempster, about the relationship between AI, art and human creativity, now and in the future.

Doors open at 6:00 PM for a prompt 6:30 PM start. Guests are invited to explore Peter Macdonald’s latest exhibition, ‘Is this all your own work?’, before the event begins, and will have the opportunity to co-create an artwork with an AI ‘mind’ via the exhibition’s app. The discussion will be followed by an open Q&A session. A limited number of signed copies of Re-Humanize: How to Build Human-Centric Organizations in the Age of Algorithms, Phanish’s most recent book, will be available. We offer concession tickets for students.

The exhibition, which includes original paintings, a digital artwork and an AI-powered co-creation app, stages a dialogue between human and AI creativity. Peter Macdonald’s artistic process is an exploration of ‘how it feels and looks to act like a machine’: envisioning the artistic self as the unique product of accumulated life experiences, influences and relationships – a personal dataset – he creates each painting from a generative ‘prompt’. For Macdonald, the crucial human element in artistic creation is materially expressed: it lies in the visible traces of the ‘artist’s hand’ upon the finished canvas; the gestural quality of the brushwork; the mark of the maker. The new exhibition interrogates ideas of ownership, agency, originality and even selfhood.

Phanish Puranam is a globally recognised expert in strategy and organisation design. In October 2025, he received the Oskar Morgenstern Medal, which is awarded biannually by the University of Vienna for distinguished contributions to Business, Economics and Statistics. Re-Humanize (2024) presents a guide to optimising digital efficiency and productivity within organisations while preserving – and amplifying – their capacity to provide ‘meaning, connection and purpose’ for the people who constitute them.

If you are attending on a student ticket, please remember to bring a valid ID with you, as you will be asked to present it at the door. If you have a coupon for this event, you will be able to apply it at checkout.

Prof. Phanish Puranam: https://www.insead.edu/faculty/phanish-puranam
Re-Humanize: https://www.penguin.sg/book/re-humanize
Peter Macdonald: https://petermacdonald.net