In exactly one week, I’m going to giving my presentation, You’re Not Too Late to the AI Party at the Civo Navigate North America conference in Austin, Texas!
The talk, which is in a prime time slot — day one (Tuesday, February 20) just after the opening keynote (10:30 a.m.) — is for people who’ve been too busy with their actual work to get into AI and have been feeling increasing amounts of FOMO.
I’ve been spending my suddenly copious amounts of free time polishing this presentation and accompanying demos to a bright sheen. Here’s a sample from my current set of slides:
In the talk, I’ll cover four reasons why it’s not too late to get into AI, as well as possible ways you can get started.
I’ll also talk about:
- AI’s overnight success was 70 years in the making
- Are you a centaur or a minotaur, and which one is better?
- AI options if you can code, and options if you can’t
- AI techbros and “chaos muppets,” and the effect they have on the industry
- AI ethics and how badly we need it
This talk won’t be all hand-wavey and descriptions, but will also feature demos of actual working code that you can also download, including:
- ELIZA, the original 1964 chatbot, but written in present-day Python.
- A basic neural network demo that shows how you implement them — perhaps the one that recognizes handwritten numbers, perhaps something a little more interesting!
- “Sweater or no?” — a large language model-powered application that tells you what to wear based on your location, the weather, and the event you’re attending.
Most importantly, the talk will be fun!
I’ll be in Austin for most of next week. If you can attend Civo Navigate, I’d love to see you there! I’ll also be free and out and about in Austin that Thursday (Feb 22) for most of the day — if you’d like to meet up, let me know!