Machine Learning & AI Meetup

The MLAI Meetup is a community for AI researchers and professionals which hosts monthly talks on exciting research. Our format is:

• 6:00 - 6:20: Socializing
• 6:20 - 6:40: Announcements and AI news
• 6:40 - 7:40: Talk(s) and Q&A
• 7:40 - 8:00 Networking
• 8:00: Head to the nearest pub for dinner

Abed Karim: "My take on using AI to train AI"

Description: I’ll show how tools like ChatGPT, Claude Code, Solvit, and similar assistants can help with the actual work: reading a paper, understanding the method, finding or making a dataset, fine-tuning a model for a specific domain, and running and tracking experiments.

The idea is simple. We do not need to know every framework or every training detail before we can start testing ideas. These tools make it easier to move faster, try things, and work through research and experimentation with less overhead.

As an example, I’ll walk through how I would approach a recent paper, Experiential Reinforcement Learning, and use AI tools to break it down, implement the pipeline, run experiments, and look at possible limitations or next steps.

Speaker Bio: Abed works on dataset design, agentic AI systems, and reinforcement learning for language models. His current work focuses on making LLMs more creative in advertising and media, and he has also contributed to research on cultural effects in LLM mathematical reasoning and creative generation, including the creation of a cultural version of GSM8K.

Javier Candeira: "A No Name Game called Nonaga"

Talk description: Nonaga is a 2008 board game by Viktor Bautista i Roca. It's a two-player full-information turn-taking game with a twist: at every turn, each player gets to move a piece and also to reconfigure the game board!

Javier will introduce the rules and bring sets for people to try them out, as a preview of his future talk introducing a Nonaga-playing Alpha-Zero style engine.

Speaker Bio: Javier Candeira is a software engineer, entrepreneur, public speaker, conference organiser, and a lifelong student of way too many topics, including machine learning.

The MLAI Meetup is a community for AI researchers and professionals which hosts monthly talks on exciting research. Our format is:

• 6:00 - 6:20: Socializing
• 6:20 - 6:40: Announcements and AI news
• 6:40 - 7:40: Talk(s) and Q&A
• 7:40 - 8:00 Networking
• 8:00: Head to the nearest pub for dinner

Joint event with the Statistical Society of Australia!

Felicia Bongiovanni: "Inferring Time of Infection Based on Antibody Data Through a Hierarchical Bayesian Framework"

Abstract: Time-since-event prediction is a powerful tool to reconstruct histories of an event. It is commonly used in biomedicine to predict the beginning of tumor growth, to predict how long ago someone was infected with a disease, and even to predict the time since death for criminal investigations. Inference through Bayesian statistics and mathematical modelling can allow for time-since-event prediction and provide insight into the mechanisms driving an event. Machine learning is also used for time-since-event prediction but lacks the mechanistic insight Bayesian inference can provide. However, Bayesian inference, especially through Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, can be computationally expensive and time-consuming. In this talk, I describe a method for combining Bayesian inference with machine learning to improve computational efficiency while also maintaining mechanistic insight. This is demonstrated through the case study of estimating time-since-infection using antibody data.

Speaker bio: Felicia is a PhD candidate at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research where she is conducting mathematical modelling of the immune response to understand more about infectious disease dynamics. In another life, she was a data analyst for the National Health Funding Body in Canberra through the Australia Bureau of Statistics Data Graduate Program.

The MLAI Meetup is a community for AI researchers and professionals which hosts monthly talks on exciting research. Our format is:

• 6:00 - 6:20: Socializing
• 6:20 - 6:40: Announcements and AI news
• 6:40 - 7:40: Talk(s) and Q&A
• 7:40 - 8:00 Networking
• 8:00: Head to the nearest pub for dinner

Javier Candeira: "Work in Progress towards Nonaga Zero"

Talk Description: Viktor Bautista i Roca's Nonaga is a delightful board game. Google's Alpha Zero paper describes an architecture marrying Monte-Carlo Tree Search with a neural network model in order to win board games at a level above human mastery. Javier is working on an Alpha Zero-style Nonaga playing bot, and will be presenting us with his work in progress.

Talk overview:

1. The Rules of the Game (a reprise of February's presentation)
2. What is Monte Carlo Tree Search, and what flavour of it are we implementing?
3. From Alpha Go to Mu Zero: a brief literature review of Google's findings and how they apply to Nonaga Zero.
4. Status report and next planned steps on the Nonaga Zero project.
5. Q&A: Bidirectional questions and answers, as this is a talk where the speaker has questions of his own!

Speaker Bio: Javier Candeira is a software engineer, entrepreneur, public speaker, conference organiser, and a lifelong student of way too many topics, including machine learning.

Mike Bailey: "VoiceMode: Natural Voice Conversations with AI Agents"
Talk description and speaker bio TBA

The MLAI Meetup is a community for AI researchers and professionals which hosts monthly talks on exciting research. Our format is:

• 6:00 - 6:20: Socializing
• 6:20 - 6:40: Announcements and AI news
• 6:40 - 7:40: Talk(s) and Q&A
• 7:40 - 8:00 Networking
• 8:00: Head to the nearest pub for dinner