<aside> <img src="notion://custom_emoji/3b7b79b0-95af-4500-931c-e5c63e5df242/133c6f79-9a33-809e-b97a-007a409367c7" alt="notion://custom_emoji/3b7b79b0-95af-4500-931c-e5c63e5df242/133c6f79-9a33-809e-b97a-007a409367c7" width="40px" /> “The rapid advancement of generative AI technologies has sparked a transformative wave across various sectors, but one of its most intriguing and still to be determined impacts is in the realm of community building.”
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Building a Grass Roots AI Community of Practice
“The rapid advancement of generative AI technologies has sparked a transformative wave across various sectors, but one of its most intriguing and still to be determined impacts is in the realm of community building.”
“The lack of a citation for the above quote is due to an overall sense of confusion when it comes to citing a large language model. We would rather give credit to the entire human populace that contributed to its corpus than to Gemini, ChatGPT, Llama3, Mistral, DeepSeek, or Claude.”
“Nevertheless, it is still important to introduce the quote as coming from an LLM, because what a machine learning model doesn’t know is that it is too early to make assertions more widely than perhaps one single community of practice (CoP) in its infancy.”
“Despite other ‘hallucinations’ that might accompany the generation of puffery from any LLM, it may in fact be true that there is an in-person CoP that is growing in Vancouver centred around use cases, debates, demos, and new innovations that in some way or other has been informed by generative AI and AI systems.”
“AI community meetups, facilitated by Kris Krüg, provide inclusive spaces for discussions about the transformative potential and challenges of generative AI.”
“Success of the meetups may be in part due to lowering barriers to entry, enabling broader participation across academic, technical, and creative fields.”
“Meetups feature a mix of enthusiastic adopters, creatives who are confused about whether and how they can use the technology, and critical voices concerned with ethical issues and biases in AI.”
“...fostering a supportive ecosystem that encourages the exchange of ideas and innovations without corporate sponsorship.”
“When we break down aspects of this specific community of practice, can we identify insights that may be helpful for others interested in building a sustained CoP around AI?”
“Bias, generalizations, and nostalgia aside, this reflection – a summary of the experience of an emerging CoP – can only rely on making warranted assertions grounded in a specific community.”