You + A.I.

2016 has been heralded as the year of Virtual Reality, so in a new series of workshops run by the UTS Innovation & Creative Intelligence Unit, we're going to explore new and innovative uses for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Technology.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic during the second half of 2017. Many media commentators have increasingly warned of job losses due to automation and some hype has emerged around the concept of the ‘robot singularity’. I was invited to put together an entry level workshop series around artificial intelligence that could break through the hype would be of great value to the community at UTS and the wider public.

This workshop series was open to the general public and tickets sold out quickly proving that there was definitely an appetite for an entry level AI program. The series was structured to be a combination of guest speaker lightning talks, interactive brainstorming sessions and live demonstrations from people who were using AI in different ways.

Session 1: AI Already

Speakers: Theresa Anderson: What is AI? and Richard Xu: Trends in AI
Demonstrations: Herry Busaki: AI algorithms and nature, Daniel Booth: How to build a chat bot in 10 minutes, Claire Marshall: Google experiments.

Session 2: AI and the Future of Work

Speakers: Roger Kermode: How AI will affect different industries, Wayne Brookes: How AI will change the skills we need, Natalia Nikolova: How with AI affect the future of education.
Demonstrations: Oliver Moor, Jersey Cavanna, Stuart Kirkwood from Quick Connect, Eamon Barret and Calum Hamilton from Remi AI, Fiona Anson from Job Getter and Peter Giles from Choice demonstrating their new Chat bot.

Session 3: AI and Us

Speakers: William Raffe: AI in games, Paul Kennedy: AI in Health, Ollie Bown: Computational Creativity and Kirsty Kitto: Our changing relationship with machines.
Demonstrations: Snow: The Anxious Door, Monica Monin: Conversation Theory, Vijay Santhanam: Ustwo and Muru DJ, Georgette and Nat: Strategic AI in Stealth Games and William Raffe: Dynamic Difficulty adjustment in Games.

Session 4: AI and Ethics

Ethics in AI Game: designed by Claire Marshall, Aurelie Jacquet and Ele Jansen
Judges: Maragaret Petty, Mark Van Rijmenan and Kirsty Kitto
Speakers: Aurelie Jacque: Why businesses need ethics in AI to be successful, Mark Van Rijmenan: How can AI be responsible.
Demonstrations: UNSW Robocup Team and their NAO robots.

The AI workshops were fun and entertaining but also proved that there was a huge desire for people to understand the deeper consequences of this game-changing technology.

“Two thumbs up on subject matter, quality of presentations and presenters. Great atmosphere”

“Fantastic and well organised AI series, informative and fun! The guest speakers and demonstrators each week made each session interesting! Two thumbs up and definitely would recommend others for future events!”

Feedback from participants