New hub aiming to explain technology
An artificial intelligence (AI) hub on Nelson's main street aims to give people a head start in understanding the technology that would “inevitably change our lives”.
Founders of the community-led centre on Trafalgar St, which opens today, said residents could go to the store-front centre to learn about “both the threats and the opportunities” of the rapidly-evolving technology.
They hoped it would help “future proof” the community and help it prosper.
“[AI] is happening, whether we like it or not,” the brainchild of Nelson AI Sandbox - a not-for-profit subsidiary of the Nelson AI Institute - Richard Brudvik-Lindner said.
Having a place anyone could visit to explore AI, for free, would help both bridge the digital divide and build a sustainable, more connected community, he said.
“We've developed the AI Sandbox to de-mystify AI and foster a more confident, eyes-wide-open and innovative attitude to using it.”
Beginners could drop in to find out how they could use AI to help develop their interests and skills.
People who already had “some confidence with AI” could also develop skills there, through accessing AI tools and interacting with peers.
There would also be workshops designed for groups who wanted to learn to use AI for specific purposes.
Between 20-30 volunteers were on hand to man the centre, ranging from people in the tech industry to high school students and enthusiasts, Brudvik-Lindner said.
More than 20 local organisations and companies had helped bring the initiative to life, contributing either funding, man-power, material or moral support, in what its founders understood to be a world-leading initiative.
Co-founder Mark Houghton-Brown said it was becoming clear that AI was “a rapidly-evolving, transformational technology that is inevitably changing our lives”.
“But the breadth of its potential is still unclear,” the chair of the Nelson AI Institute’s board of directors said.
“If we can understand and make full use of the rapidly developing suites of AI tools available to us, then we will be better equipped to participate in the economy of the future, and to help shape it rather than simply consume it.”
Nelson AI Institute was set up with funding from the Labour Government's provincial growth fund in 2019.
The institute had created over 25 jobs and two spin off start ups, including Carbon Crop which had found over $30 million of carbon for landowners around Aotearoa in the form of carbon credits, calculated and verified from satellite imagery, Houghton-Brown said.
He acknowledged the development of AI meant there were some jobs that “could be in some way superfluous”.
People could either try to “take a wrecking ball” to the technology, put their head in the sand about it, or “try to use it to become way more productive”, he said.
Brudvik-Lindner said a truism was emerging in the field of AI, that “AI is not going to take your job, it's another person who is using AI who is likely to take your job”.
“What we're really looking at is how to empower people ... to give them capacity and abilities to do things that they don't currently have."
Nelson AI Sandbox’s sole employee, 18-year-old Liam Goodger, hoped the initiative would help make the region a place young people want to return to.
“I talk to people who have gone to uni, and nobody really sees a future in Nelson,” said the former Nelson College student who was due to head to the University of Missouri Science and Technology, to study computer science “This is something ... for people my age to look back and say this is something I actually want to be a part of, this is a region where there’s development happening.”
Co-founder Matthew Kidson said AI had the ability to solve local industry problems and boost productivity.
But the initiative was not limited to economic endeavours, he said.
“There are endless areas of opportunity where AI can provide value, including in the arts, within non-profit organisations and for the elderly population. ”
The centre was designed to strengthen the social fabric of the community, helping bring young and old together from all backgrounds, Brudvik-Lindner said.
The founders urged the community to engage with the entity, to help provide the direction of where it was going to go.
* Nelson AI Sandbox officially opens today at 228 Trafalgar St.