Tag Archives: BC + AI Ecosystem

AI’s Real Cost: Creative Power vs. Planetary Limits (a Vancouver [Canada] AI Community Meetup on November 26, 2025)

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A November 19, 2025 invitation to the upcoming Vancouver AI meetup arrived via email, Note: I have made some structural changes to the notice but the text is untouched,

Friends,

Every prompt costs water. Every image generation burns coal somewhere. We’ve been building in the cloud pretending it’s ethereal, but the cloud has a ground truth and it’s thirsty as hell.

Nov 26 [2025[ we’re getting specific about solutions.

Creative power vs. planetary limits.

The machines are thirsty, consuming water like never before while we build creative tools.

Join us for a raw conversation about AI’s double-edged reality: the creative revolution happening in your pocket versus the environmental reckoning happening in our backyards.

​We’ll explore how Vancouver’s creative community can lead by example… from indigenous-led data sovereignty to local compute clusters that heat your neighbor’s home.

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​Creative Power vs. Planetary Limits explores the tension between AI’s: explosive creative potential and its real-world environmental costs.

​Let’s dig into water and energy use in data centers, corporate responsibility, and community-led alternatives like indigenous-governed data and compute, heat recapture, and edge/local clusters.

Liz Marshall – Documentary filmmaker investigating AI’s water and energy footprint and the human-planet health link, from Great Lakes data center buildouts to right-to-water movements.

Kei Baritugo – Montreal AI Ethics Institute strategist highlighting power gaps and pushing for AI as an assistive tool, transparency, and policy that protects creative labor.

Kevin Friel – AI filmmaker advancing ethical, local-first production workflows, from edge compute to heat reuse, and championing accountable tools like carbon impact tracking.

Amanda Silvera – Amanda founded the Society for Original Biometric Identity Rights (SOBIR) and Sobir Technologies (SOBIRTECH), two initiatives focused on protecting human voice identity and building ethical frameworks for biometric rights.

Catherine Warren (moderator) – Entertainment and innovation leader with climate physics roots, former CEO of Vancouver Economic Commission, and founder of Fan Trust, steering ethical AI and sustainability across media.

Get tickets →

This isn’t another panel where everyone agrees AI is “transformative.” This is about reconciling the creative revolution with planetary reality.

Bring your questions, your skepticism, and your ideas for what we build next.

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PS: Vancouver AI is just one node. BC + AI Ecosystem is building province-wide infrastructure for ethical AI development. Membership gets you into the real conversations, not just the public ones.

Here is some logistical information from the event page,

Agenda:

​Doors Open: 6pm
Food, networking, open bar: 6-7pm
Program Begins: 7pm
Program Ends: 9pm
Desert, drinks, astronomy: 9-10pm
Event Ends: 10pm

​Program Details:

​7-715pm: Squamish Nation Welcome: Is’gh’li-ya Anthony Josesph
715-730: Community Announcements
730-745: “Watts Up?” Lionel Ringenbach
745-830: “AI’s Real Cost: Creative Power vs. Planetary Limits” panel
830-845: AI Climate Paradox Discussion
845-900: BC + Updates and Wrap-Up

​** No experience required. Curiosity is the only prerequisite.

The price of a standard ticket is $60.00.

“Multi‑modal, multi‑cultural, future facing & radically local” on October 29, 2025, a Vancouver (Canada) AI meetup at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre

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For anyone unfamiliar with multi-modal (or multimodal), here’s a definition for when the word is used in conjunction with AI, from the IBM “What is multimodal AI?” webpage,

Multimodal AI refers to machine learning models capable of processing and integrating information from multiple modalities or types of data. These modalities can include text, images, audio, video and other forms of sensory input.

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Moving onto the point, an October 8, 2025 invitation to the upcoming Vancouver AI meetup arrived via email (you can see the invite online, presumably for a limited time),

You’re invited to

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 10/29

Wednesday, October 29 [2025]
6:00 PM – 10:00 PM PDT

H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia

Oct 29 [2025] we’re back with the monthly dose of “what if we just tried the thing nobody said would work?” Indigenous knowledge meets machine learning. Film meets fever dream. Quantum computers meets grandma’s kitchen.

Next Vancouver AI community meetup: https://luma.com/vai22

We’re composting the old world into something that actually grows!

Join BC+AI—help build what comes next: https://bc-ai.ca/membership/

KK [Kris Krug]

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For anyone curious about BC’s artificial intelligence community events, there’s this BC+AI webpage.

For the meetup, the price of an ‘Earlyworm’ ticket is $47.25 (7 left) until 11:59 pm PT on October 15, 2025. The standard ticket is $63.00.

There are three free tickets for the October 29, 2025 meetup if you are a member of the Creative Mornings Vancouver community. You can signup to Creative Mornings Vancouver (part of the world’s largest creative community) for free and get announcements from the international organization and notices from the local chapter which hosts a monthly event that is also free.

The November 7, 2025 at the Vancouver Art Gallery runs from 8:15 am to 10:15 am (breakfast is included gratis the event sponsor). The guest is Brandon Wint (from the Creative Mornings Vancouver November 2025 event page),

Brandon Wint

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For more than a decade, Brandon has been a sought-after touring performance poet, having shared his work all over Canada, and internationally at festivals and showcases in the United States, Australia, Jamaica, Latvia and Lithuania. Brandon Wint’s poems and essays have been published in The Ex Puritan, Event Magazine, Arc Poetry Magazine, and Black Writers Matter, among other places. Divine Animal (Write Bloody North, 2020) is his debut collection of poetry. In recent years, his films have screened at DOXA documentary film festival and Reelworld Film Festival and Vancouver International Film Festival Centre.

Each month we ask our speaker some probing questions to give us a deeper glimpse into their life and relationship with creativity:

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Getting to the free tickets for the October 29, 2025 Vancouver AI community meetup, from the Creative Mornings Vancouver (CMVan) webpage, Note: A link has been removed,

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At each CMVan event, the 30-second pitch segment gives audience members a chance to step on stage and spotlight upcoming local creative events happening around the city.

Check out what’s coming up this October [2025]:

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10. Vancouver+AI Community Meetup #21 : Enter their raffle to win 1 of 3 tickets (Oct 29 [2025])

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To sum up, you can buy your ticket for the Vancouver AI community meetup or you can take a chance on getting one of three free tickets by signing up to the Creative Mornings Vancouver community newsletter or signing up to attend the November 7, 2025 event (Brandon Wint) and entering the raffle. Good luck!

Gradient Descent Into Community on September 24, 2025 Vancouver (Canada) AI meetup at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre

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For anyone (like me) who’s unfamiliar with the term ‘gradient descent’, here’s a definition from Geeks for Geeks (Gradient Descent Algorithm in Machine Learning; last updated July 11, 2025),

Gradient descent is the backbone of the learning process for various algorithms, including linear regression, logistic regression, support vector machines, and neural networks which serves as a fundamental optimization technique to minimize the cost function of a model by iteratively adjusting the model parameters to reduce the difference between predicted and actual values, improving the model’s performance. Let’s see it’s role in machine learning:

…

Geeks for Geeks follows up the definition with what appears to be a learning module.

Moving on, a September 15, 2025 invitation arrived via email (you can see the invite online, presumably for a limited time),

Kris Krüg
September 15, 2025
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hi friends, A quick pulse check as we slide into fall: the September Vancouver AI meetup is around the corner, the dataset just landed, and BC + AI is taking a clear shape.

1) Sept 24 [2025] Vancouver AI Meetup: Just around the corner!

Twenty‑one gatherings in a row and still getting weirder, deeper, kinder. We’re back at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre on Wed, Sept 24, 6–10 PM. It’s a night where code meets culture and nobody postures… short field reports, honest demos, hallway debugging, a few tricks up my sleeve.

If you’re coming, grab a spot so I can get the headcount right; I want the food generous and the bar properly stocked when the ideas start flying.

Got something brewing? Bring it.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 09/24

Vancouver AI warmly welcomes all members of the community passionate about shaping the future of AI – researchers, creatives, tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs,…

Get your ticket

2) AI Hackathon Round 4 — the dataset just dropped.

1,000 Canadians on music: how we discover it, how formats shaped us (vinyl → cassettes → CDs → streaming), and how it feels when AI‑generated songs slip into the mix. Not just stats—stories, theme songs, guilty pleasures, resistance. We cleaned it, mapped sentiment across 3,000+ text entries, and kept the edges so you can read the grain. Turn it into something useful: an agent that argues for/against AI tracks, a generational format map, a memory palace of theme songs, a zine, a visualization, a performance.

Submissions due Oct 15 [2025].
Awards + demos Oct 29 [2025]. Prize: $2,500.
Repo → https://github.com/WalksWithASwagger/vanai-hackathon-004
Email “I’m in” → vanaihackathon@gmail.com

In partnership with Rival Technologies.

WalksWithASwagger/vanai-hackathon-004

A dataset with 1,261+ survey responses about how people discover music, what formats they use, and how they feel about AI-generated music. – WalksWithASwagger/vanai-hackathon-004

github.com/WalksWithASwagger/vanai-hackathon-004

3) BC + AI Association: Membership as infrastructure.

We’re formalizing what’s already alive: a member‑led commons for BC: coastal, cultural, carbon‑smart. Multi‑modal, multi‑cultural, radically local, future‑facing. It’s community infrastructure you can touch: a Funding Directory (200+ programs, updated and battle‑tested), an Ecosystem Map to find collaborators fast, the ongoing AI Hackathon series and resources, a members‑only WhatsApp lounge for the real talk, a monthly newsletter that’s signal over noise, and an open line when you’ve got questions, leads, or constructive rants.

Join if you want to help steward public‑good tools, connect across regions, and grow a people‑first AI culture rooted in this place

BC + AI Ecosystem | Building a Responsible & Inclusive AI Future for British Columbia

Discover BC + AI: a multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing AI ecosystem built on ethics, creativity, and community.

bc-ai.ca

Join BC + AI

See you under the UFO roof on the 24th [September 2025],

KK & the BC+AI crew

For the meetup, the price of an ‘Earlyworm’ ticket (five are left) is $52.50 until 11:39 pm PT on September 17, 2025. The standard ticket is $63.00.

There’s more than one tier for membership in BC + AI starting with a free membership (newsletter only) and moving onto Individual for $240 and Student for $80 with more packages available.

An AI Meetup, a hackathon, and more on August 27, 2025 at Vancouver’s (Canada) H.R. MacMillan Space Centre

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Here’s an invitation (received via email) from organizer and prime mover, Kris Krug,

Vancouver AI Mission 20 Invite 8/27 [2025]

Two keynotes, top builds, winner reveal, ecosystem launch. This is what “community-driven AI” actually looks like

Think of this as a check-in with reality. We’ll trace what British Columbians said about AI, show what our builders made from it, and leave with an institution sturdy enough to carry the work forward.

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Get Your Ticket Now

On Wed Aug 27 [2025] at the Space Centre, we’ll do four things well:

1) Two keynotes

Jos Duncan-Ase (Love Now Media).
Story, justice, and what “care” means when machines are involved.

Media producer, storyteller, and product strategist with 15 years helping communities use technology and narrative to advance social justice.

Peter Bittner (TheUpgrade.ai).
Practical playbooks for AI literacy and adoption inside real teams.

Educator, newsroom technologist, and co-founder of The AI Upgrade who turns generative AI into safe, useful practice for real teams.

2) Top builds + the winner reveal (Round 3)

We’re showing a tight set from the top projects, then announcing the winner. Expect:

  • A cinematic, data-grounded short where ordinary choices (breakfast, commute, clinic visit) get automated before morality catches up.
  • A voice-first, choose-your-own-journey interface where narrative, charts, and AI commentary adapt as you explore.
  • A “policy weather” tool: type a proposal, see support vs. drama by region, toggle riders (audits, plain-language summaries), and read attributed quotes that explain the shifts.
  • 3D semantic maps of 1,001 open responses… clusters you can rotate/zoom… plus roundtable audio where each cluster speaks as a single representative voice.
  • A civic sentiment map that turns raw comments into clear, riding-level signals for policymakers and communities.
  • An AI-music dashboard that translates sentiment into lyrics and tracks—analytics you can actually listen to.

3) AI Industry Association Launch

We’re formalizing the BC + AI Ecosystem industry association non-profit… grassroots, member-driven, with real governance and and a public roadmap funded as we go… a mycelial network where poets and programmers co-shape the work, and Indigenous leadership and community protocols are built in from day one.

How it runs (short version): open working groups, transparent budgets, public roadmaps, and lightweight charters you can challenge and improve.

Founding member drive opens that night (Individual, Student, Enterprise). The first 100 help set the charter, stand up the working groups, and lock priorities for the next 12 months.

4) The long conversation

Open networking under the dome. Swap datasets, form working groups, trade stickers. If you’ve got a project that needs air or critique, you’ll find both.

Details

  • When: Wed Aug 27, 6:00–10:00 PM (doors 6:00, program 7:00)
  • Where: H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, 1100 Chestnut St
  • RSVP: https://lu.ma/vai20
  • Access: Fully accessible. Transit + parking.
  • Contact: kk@theupgrade.ai

RSVP for Vancouver AI Community Meetup

If you’re curious, come. If you’re skeptical, especially come.

Kris Krüg

I left out some bits and pieces, including an embedded video. You can see the entire invitation here.

The ‘Earlyworm’ ticket is $52.50 and is available until 11:59 pm Wednesday, August 20, 2025. After that, a Standard ticket is $63.00. You can find more details about the night’s event and AI community plans here on the ticket purchase webpage.