A December 8, 2025 email invitation announces an upcoming meetup for the Vancouver AI (artificial intelligence) community,
Wednesday, December 17 [2025] 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM PST
H.R. MacMillan Space Centre Vancouver, British Columbia
It’s dark December in Vancouver. The solstice approaches.
Two years ago, we started gathering. Trying to figure out what AI meant for the work we make and the communities we serve.
3,300+ people have moved through this space. Hundreds have demoed projects, spoken, stayed up late debugging, contributed in ways that pushed the whole thing forward.
At the darkest point of the year, we light up the work that mattered most. Six awards for the people who built BC’s AI ecosystem. Professor Patrick Parra Pennefather’s Holiday AI Extravaganza. Reflection on two years and the road ahead.
3,300+ people have moved through this space. Hundreds have demoed projects, spoken, hacked through the night, or contributed in ways that pushed the whole thing forward. At the darkest point of the year, we light up the work that mattered most.
The Squatchies
Celebrating human-machine collaboration, homegrown intelligence, and the creative rebels shaping our shared future.
Six awards for the people who moved the needle this year.
The organizers who held space. The Indigenous technologists building sovereignty through code. The artists integrating AI into their practice. The builders who shared their work so others could build.
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We’re calling them The Squatchies named for something that’s always been here, in the trees and the stories. These awards belong to BC, made by the community that’s building here.
Why This Matters
The AI story is being shaped by centralized power, but here we’re cultivating something else: community-driven intelligence rooted in ethics, imagination, and impact.
BC is a biome of intelligence… ecological, emotional, ancestral, and algorithmic. These awards recognize the minds and movements shaping our province’s distinct AI culture.
Hosted by the Kris Krüg, Vancouver AI & community-driven BC + AI industry association, the awards are a ritual of recognition, a call to gather, and a statement of values for an ecosystem growing in the shadow of Big Tech yet dreaming its own dream.
Special Holiday Performance by Alex, Zaro & Professor Patrick Parra Pennefather
Join us early for a unique holiday sound experience led by Patrick and the crew. We’re doing a live, interactive performance that captures the festive energy of the room and turns it into something special. It’s the perfect way to connect and celebrate another year of building this ecosystem together.
he Night’s Agenda
Here’s how we’re marking the moment…
The Squatchies Awards — Six recognitions for people and projects that pushed BC’s AI ecosystem forward
Patrick Penfather’s AI Musical Performance — Holiday-themed, interactive, legendary
Year-End Wrap-Up & 2025 Roadmap — Where we’ve been, where we’re going
Doors Open: 6pm Food, networking, open bar: 6-7pm Program Begins: 7pm Program Ends: 9pm Desert, drinks, astronomy: 9-10pm Event Ends: 10pm
Slap’d Treats is a Vancouver-based dessert brand serving handcrafted, over-the-top cookies that actually slap. Started by two high schoolers [Noa and Aliza], we’re all about delicious flavors and fresh-baked cookies. We’re excited to be catering Vancouver AI.
** No experience required. Curiosity is the only prerequisite.
Want to Help?
2026 bring many opportunities for collaborators, curators, sponsors, performers, and visionaries. If this speaks to your spirit, come build it with us.
British Columbia is building its own AI story. Come help us tell it.
See you under the dome.
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Cookies that slap, eh? Curiosity drove me to the website’s homepage where I found four flavours: Dubai Chocolate, Cookie Butter, Peanut Butter Chocolate, and Almond Dark Chocolate.
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.
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
This is going to be a jam-packed posting with the AI experts at the Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) virtual panel, a look back at a ‘testy’ exchange between Yoshua Bengio (one of Canada’s godfathers of AI) and a former diplomat from China, an update on Canada’s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon and his latest AI push, and a missive from the BC artificial intelligence community.
A Canadian Science Policy Centre AI panel on November 11, 2025
The Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) provides an October 9, 2025 update on an upcoming virtual panel being held on Remembrance Day,
[AI-Driven Misinformation Across Sectors Addressing a Cross-Societal Challenge]
Upcoming Virtual Panel[s]: November 11 [2025]
Artificial Intelligence is transforming how information is created and trusted, offering immense benefits across sectors like healthcare, education, finance, and public discourse—yet also amplifying risks such as misinformation, deepfakes, and scams that threaten public trust. This panel brings together experts from diverse fields [emphasis mine] to examine the manifestations and impacts of AI-driven misinformation and to discuss policy, regulatory, and technical solutions [emphasis mine]. The conversation will highlight practical measures—from digital literacy and content verification to platform accountability—aimed at strengthening resilience in Canada and globally.
For more information on the panel and to register, click below.
Odd timing for this event. Moving on, I found more information on the CSPC’s webpage for this event, Note: Unfortunately, links to the moderator’s and speakers’ bios could not be copied here,
Canadian Science Policy Centre Email info@sciencepolicy.ca
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This panel brings together cross-sectoral experts to examine how AI-driven misinformation manifests in their respective domains, its consequences, and how policy, regulation, and technical interventions can help mitigate harm. The discussion will explore practical pathways for action, such as digital literacy, risk audits, content verification technologies, platform responsibility, and regulatory frameworks. Attendees will leave with a nuanced understanding of both the risks and the resilience strategies being explored in Canada and globally.
Canada Research Chair in Internet & E-commerce Law, University of Ottawa See Bio
[Panelists]
Dr. Plinio Morita
Associate Professor / Director, Ubiquitous Health Technology Lab, University of Waterloo …
Dr. Nadia Naffi
Université Laval — Associate Professor of Educational Technology and expert on building human agency against AI-augmented disinformation and deepfakes. See Bio
Dr. Jutta Treviranus
Director, Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD U, Expert on AI misinformation in the Education sector and schools. See Bio
Dr. Fenwick McKelvey
Concordia University — Expert in political bots, information flows, and Canadian tech governance See Bio
Michael Geist has his own blog/website featuring posts on his ares of interest and featuring his podcast, Law Bytes. Jutta Treviranus is mentioned in my October 13, 2025 posting as a participant in “Who’s afraid of AI? Arts, Sciences, and the Futures of Intelligence,” a conference (October 23 – 24, 205) and arts festival at the University of Toronto (scroll down to find it) . She’s scheduled for a session on Thursday, October 23, 2025.
China, Canada, and the AI Action summit in February 2025
Zoe Kleinman’s February 10, 2025 article for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news online website also notes the encounter,
A former Chinese official poked fun at a major international AI safety report led by “AI Godfather” professor Yoshua Bengio and co-authored by 96 global experts – in front of him.
Fu Ying, former vice minister of foreign affairs and once China’s UK ambassador, is now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The pair were speaking at a panel discussion ahead of a two-day global AI summit starting in Paris on Monday [February 10, 2025].
The aim of the summit is to unite world leaders, tech executives, and academics to examine AI’s impact on society, governance, and the environment.
Fu Ying began by thanking Canada’s Prof Bengio for the “very, very long” document, adding that the Chinese translation stretched to around 400 pages and she hadn’t finished reading it.
She also had a dig at the title of the AI Safety Institute – of which Prof Bengio is a member.
China now has its own equivalent; but they decided to call it The AI Development and Safety Network, she said, because there are lots of institutes already but this wording emphasised the importance of collaboration.
The AI Action Summit is welcoming guests from 80 countries, with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft president Brad Smith and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai among the big names in US tech attending.
Elon Musk is not on the guest list but it is currently unknown whether he will decide to join them. [As of February 13, 2025, Mr. Musk did not attend the summit, which ended February 11, 2025.]
A key focus is regulating AI in an increasingly fractured world. The summit comes weeks after a seismic industry shift as China’s DeepSeek unveiled a powerful, low-cost AI model, challenging US dominance.
The pair’s heated exchanges were a symbol of global political jostling in the powerful AI arms race, but Fu Ying also expressed regret about the negative impact of current hostilities between the US and China on the progress of AI safety.
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She gave a carefully-crafted glimpse behind the curtain of China’s AI scene, describing an “explosive period” of innovation since the country first published its AI development plan in 2017, five years before ChatGPT became a viral sensation in the west.
She added that “when the pace [of development] is rapid, risky stuff occurs” but did not elaborate on what might have taken place.
“The Chinese move faster [than the west] but it’s full of problems,” she said.
Fu Ying argued that building AI tools on foundations which are open source, meaning everyone can see how they work and therefore contribute to improving them, was the most effective way to make sure the tech did not cause harm.
Most of the US tech giants do not share the tech which drives their products.
Open source offers humans “better opportunities to detect and solve problems”, she said, adding that “the lack of transparency among the giants makes people nervous”.
But Prof Bengio disagreed.
His view was that open source also left the tech wide open for criminals to misuse.
He did however concede that “from a safety point of view”, it was easier to spot issues with the viral Chinese AI assistant DeepSeek, which was built using open source architecture, than ChatGPT, whose code has not been shared by its creator OpenAI.
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Interesting, non? You can read more about Bengio’s views in an October 1, 2025 article by Rae Witte for Futurism.
In a Policy Forum, Yue Zhu and colleagues provide an overview of China’s emerging regulation for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and its potential contributions to global AI governance. Open-source AI systems from China are rapidly expanding worldwide, even as the country’s regulatory framework remains in flux. In general, AI governance suffers from fragmented approaches, a lack of clarity, and difficulty reconciling innovation with risk management, making global coordination especially hard in the face of rising controversy. Although no official AI law has yet been enacted, experts in China have drafted two influential proposals – the Model AI Law and the AI Law (Scholar’s Proposal) – which serve as key references for ongoing policy discussions. As the nation’s lawmakers prepare to draft a consolidated AI law, Zhu et al. note that the decisions will shape not only China’s innovation, but also global collaboration on AI safety, openness, and risk mitigation. Here, the authors discuss China’s emerging AI regulation as structured around 6 pillars, which, combined, stress exemptive laws, efficient adjudication, and experimentalist requirements, while safeguarding against extreme risks. This framework seeks to balance responsible oversight with pragmatic openness, allowing developers to innovate for the long term and collaborate across the global research community. According to Zhu et al., despite the need for greater clarity, harmonization, and simplification, China’s evolving model is poised to shape future legislation and contribute meaningfully to global AI governance by promoting both safety and innovation at a time when international cooperation on extreme risks is urgently needed.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
China’s emerging regulation toward an open future for AI by Yue Zhu, Bo He, Hongyu Fu, Naying Hu, Shaoqing Wu, Taolue Zhang, Xinyi Liu, Gang Xu, Linghan Zhang, and Hui Zhou. Science 9 Oct 2025Vol 390, Issue 6769 pp. 132-135 DOI: 10.1126/science.ady7922
This paper is behind a paywall.
No mention of Fu Ying or China’s ‘The AI Development and Safety Network’ but perhaps that’s in the paper.
Canada and its Minister of AI and Digital Innovation
Evan Solomon (born April 20, 1968)[citation needed] is a Canadian politician and broadcaster who has been the minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation since May 2025. A member of the Liberal Party, Solomon was elected as the member of Parliament (MP) for Toronto Centre in the April 2025 election.
He was the host of The Evan Solomon Show on Toronto-area talk radio station CFRB,[2] and a writer for Maclean’s magazine. He was the host of CTV’s national political news programs Power Play and Question Period.[3] In October 2022, he moved to New York City to accept a position with the Eurasia Group as publisher of GZERO Media.[4] Solomon continued with CTV News as a “special correspondent” reporting on Canadian politics and global affairs.”[4]
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Had you asked me what background one needs to be a ‘Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation’, media would not have been my first thought. That said, sometimes people can surprise you.
Solomon appears to be an enthusiast if a June 10, 2025 article by Anja Karadeglija for The Canadian Press is to be believed,
Canada’s new minister of artificial intelligence said Tuesday [June 10, 2025] he’ll put less emphasis on AI regulation and more on finding ways to harness the technology’s economic benefits [emphases mine].
In his first speech since becoming Canada’s first-ever AI minister, Evan Solomon said Canada will move away from “over-indexing on warnings and regulation” to make sure the economy benefits from AI.
His regulatory focus will be on data protection and privacy, he told the audience at an event in Ottawa Tuesday morning organized by the think tank Canada 2020.
Solomon said regulation isn’t about finding “a saddle to throw on the bucking bronco called AI innovation. That’s hard. But it is to make sure that the horse doesn’t kick people in the face. And we need to protect people’s data and their privacy.”
The previous government introduced a privacy and AI regulation bill that targeted high-impact AI systems. It did not become law before the election was called.
That bill is “not gone, but we have to re-examine in this new environment where we’re going to be on that,” Solomon said.
He said constraints on AI have not worked at the international level.
“It’s really hard. There’s lots of leakages,” he said. “The United States and China have no desire to buy into any constraint or regulation.”
That doesn’t mean regulation won’t exist, he said, but it will have to be assembled in steps.
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Solomon’s comments follow a global shift among governments to focus on AI adoption and away from AI safety and governance.
The first global summit focusing on AI safety was held in 2023 as experts warned of the technology’s dangers — including the risk that it could pose an existential threat to humanity. At a global meeting in Korea last year, countries agreed to launch a network of publicly backed safety institutes.
But the mood had shifted by the time this year’s AI Action Summit began in Paris. …
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Solomon outlined several priorities for his ministry — scaling up Canada’s AI industry, driving adoption and ensuring Canadians have trust in and sovereignty over the technology.
He said that includes supporting Canadian AI companies like Cohere, which “means using government as essentially an industrial policy to champion our champions.”
The federal government is putting together a task force to guide its next steps on artificial intelligence, and Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon is promising an update to the government’s AI strategy.
Solomon told the All In artificial intelligence conference in Montreal on Wednesday [September 24, 2025] that the “refreshed” strategy will be tabled later this year, “almost two years ahead of schedule.”
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“We need to update and move quickly,” he said in a keynote speech at the start of the conference.
The task force will include about 20 representatives from industry, academia and civil society. The government says it won’t reveal the membership until later this week.
Solomon said task force members are being asked to consult with their networks, suggest “bold, practical” ideas and report back to him in November [2025].
The group will look at various topics related to AI, including research, adoption, commercialization, investment, infrastructure, skills, and safety and security. The government is also planning to solicit input from the public. [emphasis mine]
Canada was the first country to launch a national AI strategy [the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy announced in 2016], which the government updated in 2022. The strategy focuses on commercialization, the development and adoption of AI standards, talent and research.
Solomon also teased a “major quantum initiative” coming in October [2025?] to ensure both quantum computing talent and intellectual property stay in the country.
Solomon called digital sovereignty “the most pressing policy and democratic issue of our time” and stressed the importance of Canada having its own “digital economy that someone else can’t decide to turn off.”
Solomon said the federal government’s recent focus on major projects extends to artificial intelligence. He compared current conversations on Canada’s AI framework to the way earlier generations spoke about a national railroad or highway.
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He said his government will address concerns about AI by focusing on privacy reform and modernizing Canada’s 25-year-old privacy law.
“We’re going to include protections for consumers who are concerned about things like deep fakes and protection for children, because that’s a big, big issue. And we’re going to set clear standards for the use of data so innovators have clarity to unlock investment,” Solomon said.
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The government is consulting with the public? Experience suggests that when all the major decisions will have been made; the public consultation comments will mined so officials can make some minor, unimportant tweaks.
Canada’s AI Task Force and parts of the Empire Club talk are revealed in a September 26, 2025 article by Alex Riehl for BetaKit,
Inovia Capital partner Patrick Pichette, Cohere chief artificial intelligence (AI) officer Joelle Pineau, and Build Canada founder Dan Debow are among 26 members of AI minister Evan Solomon’s AI Strategy Task Force trusted to help the federal government renew its AI strategy.
Solomon revealed the roster, filled with leading Canadian researchers and business figures, while speaking at the Empire Club in Toronto on Friday morning [September 26, 2025]. He teased its formation at the ALL IN conference earlier this week [September 24, 2025], saying the team would include “innovative thinkers from across the country.”
The group will have 30 days to add to a collective consultation process in areas including research, talent, commercialization, safety, education, infrastructure, and security.
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The full AI Strategy Task Force is listed below; each member will consult their network on specific themes.
Research and Talent
Gail Murphy, professor of computer science and vice-president – research and innovation, University of British Columbia and vice-chair at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada
Diane Gutiw, VP – global AI research lead, CGI Canada and co-chair of the Advisory Council on AI
Michael Bowling, professor of computer science and principal investigator – Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab, University of Alberta and research fellow, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute and Canada CIFAR AI chair
Arvind Gupta, professor of computer science, University of Toronto
Adoption across industry and governments
Olivier Blais, co-founder and VP of AI, Moov and co-chair of the Advisory Council on AI
Cari Covent, technology executive
Dan Debow, chair of the board, Build Canada
Commercialization of AI
Louis Têtu, executive chairman, Coveo
Michael Serbinis, founder and CEO, League and board chair of the Perimeter Institute
Adam Keating, CEO and Founder, CoLab
Scaling our champions and attracting investment
Patrick Pichette, general partner, Inovia Capital
Ajay Agrawal, professor of strategic management, University of Toronto, founder, Next Canada and founder, Creative Destruction Lab
Sonia Sennik, CEO, Creative Destruction Lab
Ben Bergen, president, Council of Canadian Innovators
Building safe AI systems and public trust in AI
Mary Wells, dean of engineering, University of Waterloo
Joelle Pineau, chief AI officer, Cohere
Taylor Owen, founding director, Center [sic] for Media, Technology and Democracy [McGill University]
Education and Skills
Natiea Vinson, CEO, First Nations Technology Council
Alex Laplante, VP – cash management technology Canada, Royal Bank of Canada and board member at Mitacs
David Naylor, professor of medicine – University of Toronto
Infrastructure
Garth Gibson, chief technology and AI officer, VDURA
Ian Rae, president and CEO, Aptum
Marc Etienne Ouimette, chair of the board, Digital Moment and member, OECD One AI Group of Experts, affiliate researcher, sovereign AI, Cambridge University Bennett School of Public Policy
Security
Shelly Bruce, distinguished fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation
James Neufeld, founder and CEO, Samdesk
Sam Ramadori, co-president and executive director, LawZero
With files from Josh Scott
If you have the time, Riehl ‘s September 26, 2025 article offers more depth than may be apparent in the excerpts I’ve chosen.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Arvind Gupta’s name. I’m glad to see he’s part of this Task Force (Research and Talent). The man was treated quite shamefully at the University of British Columbia. (For the curious, this August 18, 2015 article by Ken MacQueen for Maclean’s Magazine presents a somewhat sanitized [in my opinion] review of the situation.)
One final comment, the experts on the virtual panel and members of Solomon’s Task Force are largely from Ontario and Québec. There is minor representation from others parts of the country but it is minor.
British Columbia wants entry into the national AI discussion
Just after I finished writing up this post, I received Kris Krug’s (techartist, quasi-sage, cyberpunk anti-hero from the future) October 14, 2025 communication (received via email) regarding an initiative from the BC + AI community,
Growth vs Guardrails: BC’s Framework for Steering AI
Our open letter to Minister Solomon shares what we’ve learned building community-led AI governance and how BC can help.
Ottawa created a Minister of Artificial Intelligence and just launched a national task force to shape the country’s next AI strategy. The conversation is happening right now about who gets compute, who sets the rules, and whose future this technology will serve.
Our new feature, Growth vs Guardrails [see link to letter below for ‘guardrails’], is already making the rounds in those rooms. The message is simple: if Ottawa’s foot is on the gas, BC is the steering wheel and the brakes. We can model a clean, ethical, community-led path that keeps power with people and place.
This is the time to show up together. Not as scattered voices, but as a connected movement with purpose, vision, and political gravity.
Over the past few months, almost 100 of us have joined as the new BC + AI Ecosystem Association non-profit as Founding Members. Builders. Artists. Researchers. Investors. Educators. Policymakers. People who believe that tech should serve communities, not the other way around.
Now we’re opening the door wider. Join and you’ll be part of the core group that built this from the ground up. Your membership is declaration that British Columbia deserves to shape its own AI future with ethics, creativity, and care.
If you’ve been watching from the sidelines, this is the time to lean in. We don’t do panels. We do portals. And this is the biggest one we’ve opened yet.
See you inside,
Kris Krüg Executive Director BC + AI Ecosystem Association kk@bc-ai.ca | bc-ai.ca
Canada just spun up a 30-day sprint to shape its next AI strategy. Minister Evan Solomon assembled 26 experts (mostly industry and academia) to advise on research, adoption, commercialization, safety, skills, and infrastructure.
On paper, it’s a pivot moment. In practice, it’s already drawing fire. Too much weight on scaling, not enough on governance. Too many boardrooms, not enough frontlines. Too much Ottawa, not enough ground truth.
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This is Canada’s chance to reset the DNA of its AI ecosystem.
But only if we choose regeneration over extraction, sovereign data governance over corporate capture, and community benefit over narrow interests.
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The Problem With The Task Force
Research says: The group’s stacked with expertise. But critics flag the imbalance. Where’s healthcare? Where’s civil society beyond token representation? Where are the people who’ll feel AI’s impact first: frontline workers, artists, community organizers?
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The worry:Commercialization and scaling overshadow public trust, governance, and equitable outcomes. Again.
The numbers back this up: Only 24% of Canadians have AI training. Just 38% feel confident in their knowledge. Nearly two-thirds see potential harm. 71% would trust AI more under public regulation.
We’re building a national strategy on a foundation of low literacy and eroding trust. That’s not a recipe for sovereignty. That’s a recipe for capture.
Principles for a National AI Strategy: What BC + AI Stands For
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.
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:
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!
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:
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
