Y3K Innovation Summit Demystifies AI and Blockchain for Marginalized Communities

Whereas specialists and pundits argue about tips on how to rein in generative AI and decry bias within the expertise, a gaggle of tech lovers gathered on the College of Southern California on Saturday to achieve a special viewers. The Y3K Innovation Summit was designed to point out the group how AI, blockchain, and different applied sciences will be harnessed to profit them.

“Lots of these universities get scared after they hear crypto or Web3,” organizer Tony Bravado instructed Decrypt in an interview on the Y3K Innovation Summit. Bravado can also be a co-founder of the blockchain variety group NFTCLT.

Launched in 2021, Charlotte-based NFTCLT Solutions supplies training, group occasions, and sources to show people about rising applied sciences like blockchain, gaming, and synthetic intelligence.

The Y3K Innovation Summit, Bravado stated, was years within the making, and dealing with USC allowed Bravado and NFTCLT co-founder Shana Douglass to create a convention that was simply accessible to everybody, and never simply those that might afford dear tickets. Bravado stated the plan is to host extra Y3K occasions in colleges throughout America.

“[We want] folks to really be taught and use the tech as a substitute of being scared due to what they hear within the media,” Bravado defined.

Placing blockchain, the metaverse, and AI in entrance of scholars in a means they’ll perceive, he stated, is significant to make sure folks of colour and minority teams usually are not left behind and ignored of the dialogue surrounding these rising applied sciences.

“It is essential as a result of all this tech that is popping out, you are both gonna must discover ways to adapt to it, or you are going to be steamrolled over,” Bravado stated.

Speedy advances in synthetic intelligence have led many high-profile members of the tech business, together with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, to name for a pause on growth. Others, together with the United Nations, and the Vatican, have urged AI builders to be conscious of the potential use of AI expertise for discrimination, hate, and fueling violence utilizing deepfakes. AI has additionally been accused of perpetuating racism and stereotypes.

There are various hurdles to beat in generative AI, however Bravado is optimistic about the way forward for the expertise and the way underserved communities can use it to their benefit, together with in areas like healthcare, the place it might rapidly diagnose ailments and information therapy, one thing marginalized communities usually lack. He continued that AI can improve effectivity relatively than change human jobs, including that by studying to adapt to AI, we are able to unlock new options to world challenges.

Bravado emphasised that it was essential for the group to see itself mirrored within the folks educating these applied sciences.

“It was crucial as a result of just one% of black folks, minorities, get funding within the house or get illustration within the house, so Y3K made certain all of the facilitators have been folks of colour,” Bravado stated. “Having this connection that you’ve got right here at USC should not be restricted—it must be obtainable for everybody.”

He added that the audio system jumped on the probability to return to USC and educate and exhibit the expertise they have been constructing.

“The true builders which can be out right here, constructing for underserved communities, care about goal over revenue,” Bravado stated. “You need folks to have the identical like thoughts as you, identical targets.”

Held within the basement of USC’s Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Library, the Y3K Summit provided a variety of discussions and workshops specializing in expertise and Web3. The house has podcasting rooms, video manufacturing services, and high-powered gaming computer systems. Occasion sponsor The Sandbox even offered attendees a hands-on expertise with blockchain gaming.

Josiah Way, former director of studying environments at USC, praised the convention and the venue’s distinctive options.

“This convention could be very distinctive,” Method instructed Decrypt. “The place else are you able to discover a location that’s so multidisciplinary in every thing it supplies?” He famous the completely put in NFT Artwork Gallery, hologram creator, and 3D modeling gear. “To have an occasion like this, the place you will get the highest influencers and thought leaders collectively in a single spot to collaborate and simply be artistic—[I’ve] by no means seen something prefer it earlier than.”

The basement the place the Y3K summit was held was Method’s brainchild earlier than he left the college to hitch cross-town rival UCLA as their govt director of digital areas. The intention of the venue, three years within the making, was to function a common collaboration house for college kids from all disciplines, Method defined.

“The thought was how are you going to take a scholar, it doesn’t matter what you are finding out, whether or not you are a enterprise scholar, a humanities scholar, pc science scholar, and are available collectively and simply say, ‘I would like to have the ability to collaborate with others,’” Method stated, including that the undertaking started three years in the past however the world pandemic in 2020 put issues on maintain.

Undeterred by the pandemic, Method stated USC needed to proceed with the constructing undertaking, and Y3K was its first main occasion after its completion.

“To have a convention like this in an area like this, and to have Shana and Tony say we need to carry within the individuals who matter, who can provide artistic concepts, who can discover and have the ability to expose all the individuals who would not have been served earlier than,” Method stated. “We’re gonna give equal entry to everyone as a result of we all know everyone issues, and that basically was the purpose of this.”