Five insights into our AI future, from Futureproof

How we can make a better world with AI

Last week’s Futureproof Festival left me with a ton of fresh ideas and inspiration for how to work with AI and advocate for a better AI future.

Here are five ideas that will stick with me, taken from different speakers. These aren’t direct quotes—this is what I took from their talks, not their exact words.

Our digital overwhelm stems in part from how we’ve built a world of touch-screen interfaces that deprive our sensory systems of the signals we need to make interactions effortless or unconscious. (via Amber Case of the Calm Tech Institute)

Local, community-owned AI models are essential to ensuring the data sovereignty of Indigenous and anti-colonial AI projects, and the technology may also be a lot more effective than what a large, commercial LLM can deliver. (via Peter Lucas-Jones of Te Hiku Media)

Even artists who have been AI skeptics may want to explore AI-enabled production, because it’s now easier to get creative projects funded when there’s an AI angle. (via Mayumi Rollings of Tiny Ghost Studios)

AI “frontier labs” like OpenAI and Anthropic shouldn’t be allowed to IPO, because once we’re in a situation where pension funds and other investments depend on the valuation of those shares, it will be even harder to regulate AI or slow down its wild acceleration. (via journalist and UBC professor Naomi Klein )

Canada needs its own public AI, and grassroots AI communities like the bc+ai ecosystem can be part of building a movement for AI as public infrastructure. (via Ana Serrano , President of OCAD University)

Huge congrats to Kris Krüg and the Futureproof team for making year one of this event into such a remarkable gathering. I can’t wait for year two.

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My talk at last week's Futureproof Festival • photo: Michelle Diamond

An on-stage experiment

My own talk at Futureproof shared a taste of Working Neurosmart . Since Futureproof drew a creative, open-minded crowd, I decided to take my own medicine, and present the unedited Alex—and the unedited Alex includes a lot of swearing.