One of the proud sponsors of 
Phoenix Asset Management is sponsoring four conversations on artificial intelligence at Hay Festival 2026. We come to literature's largest gathering not to celebrate AI, nor to condemn it, but to insist that the discussion be open, informed, and unafraid of its own difficulty.
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/ˈsɛntɔːr | noun
A human partnered with a machine, outperforming either alone.
The term comes from chess. After Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997, the grandmaster proposed a new format: humans and computers playing as a single contestant. The result was stronger than either could achieve alone.
Phoenix has set about building an investment process in this image: not handing analysis to the machine, nor pretending the machine is not there, but learning to think alongside it.
Phoenix is an unconventional value-investment firm built on classical value investing and behavioural psychology. In 28 years we have developed proprietary frameworks and tools — a compounding learning machine designed to make clearer judgments and invest with long-term conviction.
Founded by Gary Channon, Phoenix has built a reputation for the depth and quality of its analysis, the work of a team of centaurs, humans augmented by AI. The same questions that animate our research animate our interest in this festival: what does it mean to think well, in public, in 2026?
They are a small contribution to a larger project: encouraging honest and open discussion about these tools, and keeping the people who write our books in the room while it happens.
We have no commercial product to sell at this festival. We are here because Hay is one of the few places where the right people argue these questions in good faith, and because the answers matter to the world we will all be investing, working and reading in over the next decade.
At Phoenix, reading is an essential part of our research process.
Our Reading Room is where we share the books that have shaped our thinking, with reviews from the team.
All four events are part of the Phoenix-sponsored AI strand at Hay Festival 2026.
Tickets, locations and the full festival programme are available at hayfestival.org.
Nate Soares • Patricia Clarke
A stark, considered argument from one of AI safety's most uncompromising voices. Soares makes the case that the development of superintelligent systems, on the present trajectory, is a civilisational risk.
Jamie Bartlett • Aleks Krotoski • Madhumita Murgia • Nate Soares
Tim Wu • Sarah Wynn-Williams • Carole Cadwalladr
Daniel Hahn • Philip Jones • Cathryn Summerhayes
