Post Post-Prediction Unconference Post!
Watch on Vimeo - Post-Prediction Un-Conference Highlights!
One of the groups during one of the unconference sessions on the day, discussing AI and climate.
Last week we helped organise the first Post-Prediction Conference. We organised it as an Unconference.
The event went amazingly well! We had a really diverse and interesting, and interested attendees, who were ready to discuss a wide-ranging series of topics all relating to what we do when we have powerful AIs at our disposal.
Let’s break-down how things went.
Breakdown
Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone who donated money to attend the conference.
We raised $747.00 for bush fire relief, which was donated to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy via GiveNow.
Note: it says we donated more because we covered the cost of donation via GiveNow.
Photos
You can find all the images we took of the event here: Post-Prediction Conference Images.
Topics
Arna is putting together a full “proceedings” for the conference, so we’ll include that here when it’s ready.
Roughly, from my memory, we covered:
- AI and the climate
- AI, mental health and healthcare
- Post-Human Literature
- Ethics & The Ethics Canvas & Ethical Litmus Test
- Creative AI Techniques
- AI and Music
- AI v.s. Humans
- AI in education and translating research
Attendees
Of course, the best part was the attendees. Many people have said that it didn’t “feel” like a normal tech event, because the crowd was so diverse. Hopefully, that will change over the years, as the tech and AI industry in particular improves.
It was amazing for me, personally, to meet so many new people, and gain an insight into how others think and talk about AI.
Regarding the diversity, there were a few people who asked about how we achieved this.
Here’s my thoughts:
- We had a diverse set of organisers
- We promoted to our own networks; i.e. a diverse set of networks
- People self-selected to attend based on the established themes
Conclusion
Due to the positive feedback; we’ll definitely be running this event again next year.
The rough plan is to organise a two-day conference next time, with the first day being planned talks, and the second day being the same unconference format.
If you’re keen to be involved, then please reach out to us, or join our newsletter to receive updates!
Thanks to all the other organisers, and volunteers, and a big thanks to James Harland from RMIT for organising the venue for us!
