Berkeley AI Meetup

Artificial intelligence is just beginning to come of age. The latest wave of new AI capabilities has transformed what's possible in meaningful ways, reminiscent of the rise of the internet or the inception of public cloud and mobile computing. These technological advances along with an acceleration of new capabilities will deeply impact core functions of teaching, learning, research and administration at all universities. Advances are occurring across many domains of AI-- and the community of practice encompasses this wider interpretation-- from machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, including generative AI and also inquiry into AI ethics, explainable AI and knowledge representation.

All across the University-- indeed across all higher education and the business world, people are actively beginning to identify and exploit AI in its many forms. Embracing new technologies is not without risk. Berkeley faces a daunting number of legal, policy, technical, infrastructural, environmental, ethical and data management questions accompanying the rise of AI. Berkeley faculty, staff and students face an imperative to stay on top of the tools to keep the University competitive -- and they require timely, action-oriented decisions from the institution.

(Formerly the UC Berkeley Cloud Meetup)

Welcome to the Berkeley AI Meetup! This group is for you, and you belong here and are very welcome no matter what your of level of knowledge or experience with AI.

Here's why we created this Meetup:

Artificial intelligence is just beginning to come of age. Although the field of AI in all its forms has been around for more than seventy years, the latest waves of new AI capabilities have transformed what's possible in meaningful ways, reminiscent of the rise of the internet or the inception of public cloud and mobile computing. These technological advances along with the rise of computing power and the acceleration of new capabilities will deeply impact core functions of teaching, learning, research and administration at all universities. Advances are occurring across many domains of AI-- and the community of practice encompasses this wider interpretation-- from machine learning, natural language processing, and robotics, including generative AI and also inquiry into AI ethics, explainable AI and knowledge representation.

Much of the engineering behind AI has been invented at UC Berkeley. Many of the approaches to responsible innovation, including thought specifically about AI, have originated here among our academics.  This Meetup provides a collaborative, community oriented venue to inspire and engage our staff, spread the best ideas and thinking, and to share ideas bidirectionally with the wider community outside the University's walls. The meetup provides an inclusive environment for interested people of all abilities and backgrounds from beginners to expert practitioners. We will showcase challenges, inquiry, expertise and innovations of interest to Berkeley and our peers across the UC system and at other universities. (We previously took a similar approach with the UC Berkeley Cloud Computing Meetup.)