Vancouver AI: The Community You've Been Waiting For...

0:00incoming transmission from the future Vancouver AI community meetup. Um, okay, community announcement section. So, we're going to um turn through this one, but there's a few people who know you're coming up here. Um, hey, what's up, Alexis? Nice to see you. Um, why don't I get started with a Schwartzman or Riv? Riv, you here? Um, Riv and Matthew Schwartzman started up the Suriri AMI Meetup Group, a spin-off of this. They just had their second event. It was awesome. the Siri Economic Development Commission bought tickets and showed up and was like, I heard there's an AI community former here at event number two. Um, I'm proud of you, bro. Just give a quick one, two, about

0:37what's what and invite people to the next event. Yeah, thank you, bro. Uh, so the last event, second event was incredible. We did a couple different things and one of those is that I really loved part of it is we did an interactive games with AI and what's real and what's AI and it was something that was really engaging and unique and you know it's a small crowd right now we have about 15 every month right now and I'm hoping to grow that from the next one so please everyone here come to the next one that'd be awesome uh we do it at the Legion building in South Syria at Legion number eight uh right now they

1:10have incredible food incredible drinks there and it's been just uh really exciting I'm really happy for the next chapter and with Chris support it's been best best part is circle time it's smaller so we actually get to have a circle and go around talk about stuff and share and like it's pretty awesome actually that's my favorite part yeah that part is pretty awesome it it's really great to really connect with everyone and get in that like that depth right um could I take 30 seconds about the lapu lapu day festival yeah and I want to follow that up yeah okay uh so I am really heavily involved in the Filipino community and what was happened

1:44recently the festival was really tragic. Um, and my wife is Filipino and I have Filipino son obviously, you know, half at least. Um, anyways, I'd just like to take like 30 seconds just silence and just remember, you know, what happened. All right.

2:32Thank you guys. Thanks for bringing it up, man, because it's actually on the um the agenda for this section. So, I wanted to say something as well, which is um you know, we've been talking about a little bit on our group chat what happened. It's been a pretty hard week to be a Vancouver, right? um trying to make sense of it all and there's been a lot of interesting chat amongst us. But you know, I've been looking for like authentic ways to talk about it and express it uh as well for us as a community. And I came in here a couple days ago to do some prep for this. And who do I run into right at the front

3:03door with Sunny, the housekeeper, who I've been hanging out with for like the last 6 months. And him and Gino are both Filipino. I've been having meals with them. They support our community. They clean up after us. And so I just want to let you know there are Filipino members of this community too that were affected, you know, and stuff and they're out there helping out tonight.

3:20You're going to see them around. Like you're welcome to say hi to them if you're looking to, you know, connect with how you might be able to help or support or what they might need. Those will be guys that are in this community. They're in this building tonight that uh you could talk to as well. Also, Riv's got some stuff going on with his wife and stuff. So, thanks for bringing it up because um something needed to be said, man. Yeah. Yeah.

3:45Let's go with um Vaga and Maravi. We got um a couple folks here that are pulling together an AI ethics and government governance um conference. They're also connected with my buddy Fergus Lenley Mot who did the thing at Wasque Center uh in December. So I just want new members of the community came last month. They've been participating and I wanted you to come up and talk about the thing you're pulling together. Thank you. Thank Chris. Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Madavi and my colleague here she is Vijaya. So I really want to thank Gabriel and Patrick as well for mentioning about the values what kind of values we uh need to align with and AI is huge thing. It can be a

4:25great monster it can be a good monster bad monster. So how do we really do that value alignment and uh the ethics part of it the governance part of it. So Vijay and I have planned a conference. It might be a mini conference. It can be a small summit or it can be a huge conference depending on the support we get. So that is planned for 24th of October and it is AI and ethics and governance. So we are talking with uh Simon Fraser University. We're talking with some other partners in the government with the ministry of um uh citizen services who is responsible for the data and the governance part of it.

5:02So uh this is where we are really looking for your insights, your inputs and support as well. And I'll ask Vijaya to add. Yeah. Um as she very nicely mentioned the monster aspect of it. We just want to kind of highlight and start the dialogue. The dialogue has been around uh but uh we want to take it further. So there is a as a AI community we need to talk about the values. um as a speaker before us I forget the name Ben Feather um Patrick Patrick sorry sorry yes yes how he mentioned about the values you want to keep the AI human centric it should be as a tool rather than it overtaking us so we kind of

5:49forward that conversation in this conference so we are looking forward to your support thank you I appreciate you guys being here and talking about what you got going on. So the theme is if you're into the AI ethics and governance thing and you want to get more involved, talk to those guys that are pulling together something. But what we've been seeing happen over the last 6 months in this community is all sorts of things have sprung up. Not just the Siri AI meetups, there's been the women's AI meetups. There's the Squamish AI meetup.

6:14Brian Hawinstein, do you have a date picked for your next one? Okay, cool. Next, when you got a date, come take the mic. Um, there's the mind AI and consciousness group. Loki, are you here? It's been meeting up two times already. It's an incredible group. There's like 30 people in a private chat who are sharing really deep stuff about really like over the edge philosophy about mind AI and consciousness. I met a woman named Leah tonight who's doing a PhD at Oxford who wants to convene. Leah, do you want to say what you're doing real quick? Okay. Leah's pulling together wants to talk to the people that are into AI and education, AI and pedagogy,

6:48guys like Praisal who built his AI tutoring system that was demoing out there. So, there's all these cool little sub pockets forming. Um, you're welcome to come to me. I'll help and support you as you can. I'll connect you with other people. I'll invite you up here to rock the mic and invite people to come connect with you. So, that's what's going on. Did I miss anyone in the community announcements section before we move on? Holler at me. If you want to get into this section next month, holler at me beforehand. Carla, I forgot about you.

7:21Where's Carla from Vivo?

7:27Hi, this is Carla, the executive director of Vivo Media Arts and been getting involved in this community in lots of ways. Total community badass as it comes to the new media, video, old media, all sorts of stuff. I just wanted to come uh let you invite people out to your next event and say what you've been up to. Thanks so much. Uh yeah, I'm from Vivo. Uh so as you may or may not know uh Vivo was one of Canada's oldest artist run center. It was uh founded in 1973. We have an vast archive of media art from across the Lower Mainland, Vancouver, Canada, the world. We have over 160,000 objects in our media uh

8:04archive. I love giving tours. So please come down to uh Vivo anytime. vivomiaarts.com. Our next exhibition opens May 15th. It's uh actually looking at um internet traffic and what the cost of internet traffic is. Not only from a power um consumption but also where do the chips come from, how are they mined.

8:25Um so please go to our website, join our newsletter and uh one of the amazing things about being a part of this community is um one of the dreams, one of my new dreams with Vivo is to build a media hub where we'll have the machines so that any person can get access to this technology and to be able to train it for themselves. Um so one of the amazing things that Chris uh and being part of this community gave me was access to other resources of funding.

8:53And so I've already applied or sent letters of interest to four uh funders to build this dream um that again has completely accessible technology to every single person who wants it. So thank you. Thank you so much. Um some of you guys might remember Vanessa Sanchez's talk uh earlier this year that was about like AI funding for startups and stuff. Well, her and I when we were working on that put together like a a whole like knowledge base in my notion of like like all the different levels of government resources from federal, provincial, city ones, nonprofits, accelerators and that's just like a website on our website or whatever. And so Carla got a hold of that found like

9:29four useful things to apply to and as well up the the trail of them grabbing some money. So just pointing that out there that's like it's it's available. Ask me, ask Carla, ask on the group chat. Um yeah. Okay, sponsor time. So legit guys, look at the nice building we're in. I know that uh everyone buys their own ticket and I know it's not exactly cheap, but neither is a open bar and sushi in Vancouver anywhere you go.

9:53So I really appreciate you buying your tickets. It supports this. But also you guys, we couldn't do this without the help of some other people. Rivals come in big and we're going to talk about them later tonight, but Dimmitri Schwartzman is one of our sponsors this year. We got the guys from Segev Law that have been helping us out with monthly cash payments. Uh, Marius, are you here? Is anyone from Sega here? We referred him a deal last month that I think worked out. And if that works out, we get to like double our sponsorship and make it go farther and stuff. So, I think that happened. If you guys just need someone to talk to about

10:25intellectual property or whatever, let me introduce you to Marius or one of the Sega brothers. They specialize in like a crypto, web 3, AI, video game companies in Vancouver. So, they know our space and they're cool guys. They're contributors. Um, Michelle Diamond, I would be remiss like the the tiny little gas money I give you to come like you are a sponsor of this event. So, thank you Michelle for being here. Um, thank you Victor. All everyone who contributes to this I really really appreciate it.

10:53[Applause]