Category: Uncategorized
-
AI Is Becoming Centralised. Our Conversations Shouldn’t Be.
This piece reflects on the first year of building AI & Society across Australian cities, and why local, place-based conversations matter as AI becomes increasingly centralised. Reflections from One Year of AI & Society In December 2024, AI & Society began as a simple idea: to create a space where people could come together to…
-
1 year on
AI & Society | One Year In Over the past 12 months, AI & Society has grown into a national, place-based community exploring how artificial intelligence intersects with society, cities, work, governance and human values. 2025 at a glance:• 39 events delivered• 2,298 attendees• 2,932 community members• 95+ hours of facilitated conversation• Events hosted across…
-
AI & Society Rapid Fire
What happens when you take AI policy out of the boardroom and put it on the table? In Melbourne, we tried something different. Instead of a formal session on Australia’s National AI Plan, we ran a low-key, pub-style roundtable — designed to surface lived experience. No slides.No speakers.No “right answers”. Just prompts, conversation, and people…
-
Real or AI? When We Think We Know — But Don’t
One of the most interesting moments from our end-of-year AI & Society celebration didn’t involve a keynote speaker, slides, or technical explanations. It came from a simple question: Real or AI? Can you tell the difference? We ran a short trivia-style activity — a deliberately human experiment — to explore how easily images, stories, and confidence can blur the…
-
Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower Challenge
Human vs AI vs Cyborg.Same task. Same materials. Same time pressure. 🍝 20 spaghetti sticks🧵 1 metre of string🍬 1 marshmallow⏱️ 20 minutes What surprised me most wasn’t who won —but how differently teams behaved under pressure.• Humans planned (a lot)• AI followed instructions (literally)• Hybrid teams learned fastest The biggest lesson?Iteration beats intelligence. Every…
-
AI & Society | Adelaide
Some cities feel built for speed.Adelaide feels built for thinking. Not because of anything novel, but because of how clearly its past and present align with the work we’re doing at AI & Society. Adelaide is different.(Little history lesson… Let me know if you already knew this!) It’s the only Australian capital not founded as…
-
Exploring AI’s Role in Shaping Future Education
In May, I hosted the biggest AI & Society event to date — and what an incredible evening it was! Hosted in Brisbane at The Precinct, it was awesome to see so much engagement! The theme for May was AI in Education, and the energy in the room reflected just how important and urgent this…
-
Understanding AI: The Power of Word2Vec Explained
What happens when machines begin to understand us? That’s the theme we unpacked at our latest AI & Society meetup, April 2025 held at The Precinct in Brisbane. Thanks to John Crook, CEO of Rule 30 AI, we zoomed in on one of AI’s most transformative breakthroughs: Word2Vec – the model that helped AI go…
-
Exploring the Social Code and Lessons from Key AI Milestones.
AI & Society’s March 2025 edition wrapped up at The Precinct in Brisbane! Incredible energy in the room as technologists, researchers, designers, educators and city-makers came together to unpack how AI is reshaping the fabric of our society. A Room Full of Perspectives There’s real power in putting diverse minds in the same room. From…
-
Our Launch and Diving into the User Experience
Awesome to have wrapped up the second AI & Society — Brisbane event in February 2025 after our launch in January 2025! Thanks to the amazing community of curious humans for your presence, energy, optimism, feedback and of course challenges! The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s notion that true freedom comes from making choices based on our…
AI & Society 