Round tables

Title: Priorities for Future Policy: What Matters, Who’s Responsible, and How to Respond
Moderator: Ben Brooks
There has been lots of talk but little action on AI reform for creators. Reform is complicated by imprecision about what risks matter most to creators and developers, who in the supply chain should mitigate them, and how to respond with technical or regulatory interventions. These challenges are especially acute in an open and distributed ecosystem, where capabilities, risks, and responsibilities are distributed across different actors. This session will ask participants to prioritize risks and interventions, highlighting areas of consensus between creators and developers, as well as areas where AI reforms overreach or miss the mark.

Title: AI & Storytelling
Moderator: James Yu
In Roald Dahl’s short story “The Great Automatic Grammatizator,” he imagined a world where machines could craft Pulitzer-worthy tales—a vision once dismissed as bizarre and far-fetched. Yet, that world is nearly here. Today, storytellers are collaborating with AI, from crafting intricate plots to refining prose, spanning everything from short stories to epic novels. What happens when the storyteller is an AI-human centaur? Could an AI pen the next Great American Novel? Will the next Hemingway collaborate with AI co-authors? And perhaps the biggest question of all: does AI truly understand what it means to tell a story?

Title: Defining Creativity: Perspectives and Implications for Creative Tooling
Moderator: Isabelle Levent
What do we mean when we talk about “creativity?” Sometimes described by features of its product, process, or in relation to specific tasks, creativity lacks a standard definition. In our roundtable, we will discuss various definitions of creativity and how they inform different approaches to creative tooling.

Title: Impact of generative AI on photography and entertainment art industries
Moderator: Jingna Zhang
This roundtable will examine generative AI’s impact across creative fields in fashion and commercial photography, film, publishing, and video game productions. We will discuss current trends in both research and market adoption, explore the different interests, concerns, and challenges of those in the ecosystem, and discuss recommendations that include consideration for creator protections going forward.

Title: Exploring the side affects of AI on Creativity & Labor: the pros, the cons, the issues we never think about.
Moderator: Jillian Arnold
Our goal is to explore the downstream affects of AI on the every day lives of the artists and technicians, in the creative sectors. How does AI affect the track to becoming a master of its craft? What is the new entry level position? How does this affect healthcare, pension, and retirement? What are the up skilling and re-skilling opportunities? How do we reincorporate the creative sector? What are the emotional side affects of economizing, streamlining, and personnel contraction due to AI. How can we integrate AI with the least amount of negative impact, while not stifling the positive impact within our creative communities?

Rulings Not Rules -- Unlocking Improvisational Play
Moderator: Carl Kwoh
In this round-table we discuss how the capabilities of LLMs can unlock a powerful new digital paradigm for creativity and playfulness but moving away from deterministic rules engines, to probabilistic rulings that amplify and personalize the experience.

Exploring the Intersection of Generative AI and Human Creativity
Moderator: Kelly McKernan
Generative AI is a quickly moving technology and foundational models are already disrupting creative fields. Some laud these models as a tool in the creative process, while others believe their plagaristic roots preclude authenticity. Is it possible for Gen AI - now or in the future - to aid in creative process in a genuine manner or can it only synthesize the human ingenuity its trained upon?

Title: Copyright, Creativity, and Machine Learning: Bridging Perspectives (Online)
Moderator: Methab Khan
This roundtable invites participants from diverse backgrounds to explore the intersections of copyright, technology, and creativity. We will discuss the challenges copyright poses to developing ML applications and creative works, focusing on issues like data access, fair use, and protecting creators’ livelihoods. Together, we’ll examine how current copyright laws align with these goals and identify gaps in the law. The discussion will be collaborative, as we will examine fair use factors, analyze ongoing copyright lawsuits against AI companies, and share best practices for ML researchers working with copyrighted data and for creators protecting their work.

Title: Are AI and authoritarianism inseparable? (Online)
Moderator: Dan Mcquillan
At a time when a) politics pretty much everywhere is swinging to the far right, and b) AI is becoming an increasing part of our social systems, it seems important to ask about the relationship between AI and authoritarianism. Is advanced ML/AI a field with untapped liberatory potential, ready to be applied for good? Or are the legacies of eugenics and supremacy baked too deep into its operations and infrastructures? Come to our roundtable to discuss whether a creative approach to AI can prevent it from becoming yet another abuse of power.

Location: Pinnacle Harbourfront Hotel, Level 3 1133 W Hastings St, Vancouver, BC V6E 3T3