City.ai the Global Initiative Near You
Building a Community for Diverse and Responsible Applications of Artificial Intelligence
After speaking at an Oslo.ai event I have gotten a better impression of what they do, at least in Oslo. The work they do in gathering the community surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) for discussions on how artificial intelligence can be used for humanity led to a great deal of good conversations. As such after having such a positive experience locally I thought I would dive deeper and explore what the city.ai initiative is.
Who founded city.ai?
City.ai is according to Crunchbase a for profit company that is headquartered in the European Union, although they say they are a nonprofit on their homepage. It was initiated on Dec 8, 2015. The two co-founders as listed are Christoph Auer-Welsbach and Mike Reiner. Christopher became a partner for innovation at IBM Watson and is now a partner at IBM Ventures in 2017. Mike Reiner is a Venture Partner in OpenOcean based in Helsinki, London and Amsterdam. Mike was additionally the co-founder of World Summit AI, and AI conference in Amsterdam.
What is city.ai about?
- They are a global applied AI community.
- They want increased diversity in AI.
- They want to democratise design development and use.
According to their website they are currently active in 70 cities.
They have three main activities:
- Regular meetings between AI Stakeholders.
- Quarterly meetups.
- Local Initiatives and streams.
In addition to this they do have a Medium worth a follow:
Register as an AI practitioner
You can register as an AI practitioner on their site which pretty much means you get a profile on their page.
World Summit on AI
In fact the World Summit on AI is very soon on the 9th to the 10th of October in the Netherlands. It states it is: “The world’s leading and largest AI summit gathers the global AI ecosystem of Enterprise, BigTech, Startups, Investors and Science, the brightest brains in AI as speakers every October in Amsterdam. The mission? To tackle head-on the most burning AI issues and set the global AI agenda.” The conference has the major names in technology and a great deal of press in attendance.
As such the city.ai is a community both with a local presence and a global meeting point. This may be what makes oslo.ai an interesting actor that can connect with an international community as well as help locally.
AI Summer School in Oslo
I am currently in dialogue with the International Summer School (ISS) in Oslo to set up an accredited course in artificial intelligence both for BA and MA students. It would be interesting if we could make it happen, which I mentioned during my talk today. Oslo is a great destination for spending the summer and it would be great to host those interested in becoming AI professionals from around the world in this city. There are already every year international students coming to Oslo to attend the ISS so why not make it an AI summer school? If you believe this is an interesting possibility feel free to comment or contact me.
This is day 115 of #500daysofAI. My current focus for day 101–200 is mostly on Python programming, however there are climate protests around the world therefore I focus my writing on the climate crisis. If you enjoy this article please give me a response as I do want to improve my writing or discover new research, companies and projects.
