Most AI ethics talk sounds like someone duct-taped a values statement to a procurement form and called it leadership. This Wednesday, we’re doing something better.
The AI Ethical Futures Lab is taking over Vancouver AI at the Space Centre, and we’re getting into the real stuff: fairness, care, governance, moral imagination & power. Grab your seat: https://luma.com/vanai-april
Sarah Downey is an AI consultant and strategist with 20+ years in nonprofit and social impact leadership, and one of our founding members. She'll frame what's actually happening in the world of AI ethics and help you locate your own ethical compass in it.
What are we building, who does it serve, and who gets quietly flattened if we get lazy?
Martin Lopatka brings Rawls into the agentic workflow era with "Rawlsian Agents: An Application of LLMs to Forge Fairer Bilateral Agreements." Can AI help forge fairer agreements, or does it just automate our blind spots with better syntax?
Sev Geraskin (Economy of Wisdom / Polargrid) comes at the same beast from another angle with "Ethics for the AI Age." What if our economic systems measured care, wisdom, and relational contribution instead of worshipping productivity like a haunted spreadsheet?
Then we put them in dialogue and let the ideas spar. Martin asks whether AI can help us negotiate fairness. Sev asks what happens if we measure care instead of productivity. That's the actual juice. This is the kind of room Vancouver AI was built for.
Venessa & Makaidea: Squamish Nation Opening
We open with Venessa Gonzales AKA chiyakselut and Makaidea Gonzales bringing a Squamish West Coast traditional welcome song and blessing rooted in multi-generational knowledge.
We're going to talk about intelligence, ethics, systems, and the future and we’ll start by remembering that not all intelligence was invented in a lab, funded by venture capital, or stuffed into a chatbot with a cute product name.
A few more pieces from the commons:
The meetup is the spark. The Responsible AI Professional Certification is where we turn the spark into a working practice.
RAP (Responsible AI Professional) is a 4-week certification program for leaders, executives, and practitioners who need to understand, implement, and govern responsible AI practices.
If you’re deploying, teaching, governing, buying, advising, or explaining AI, this is a practical next step.
Four weeks. Built for leaders, executives, and practitioners who need to do more than nod gravely when someone says "AI governance." You work through real scenarios. You apply global frameworks like UNESCO, OECD, NIST, and IEEE.
Cohort capped at 30. See the program and apply: https://luma.com/ai-ethics
The BC + AI Ecosystem Association is alive, weird, useful, and growing.
BC + AI is a grassroots, community-powered association for the people actually building, questioning, teaching, funding, researching, governing, and remixing AI in this province.
If you’ve been orbiting the community, now’s a good time to actually join the thing. Members get access to the private community, member calls, discounts, spotlights, and a stronger seat at the table as we build public-interest AI infrastructure for BC.
Individual membership is $340/year. Students $115/year. Team tiers exist.
And the math is almost rude not to mention: BC + AI members save $750 on the Responsible AI Professional Certification. Joining first leaves you $410 ahead.
Membership info: https://bc-ai.ca/membership/
So here’s the move:
Grab a ticket. Bring a friend. Bring your questions. Bring your skepticism. Bring your weird little moral compass.
The machine is not steering itself.
See you Wednesday,
KK
Vancouver AI / BC + AI
Multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing.
PS. May is going to be our biggest month yet. Web Summit hits Vancouver, the RAP certification cohort kicks off, and the regular community calendar doesn't slow down for any of it.
