The first meeting under the banner of AI Tinkers took place on Wednesday 4 September 2024 at Faculty of Electrical Engineering. However, it differs from the classic conference. "Visitors heard speakers presenting technology or art projects, academic research, bastling projects or ideas preceding commercial projects and start-ups," described Ing. Marek Miltner from the Department of Economics, Management and Humanities at FEL CTU, who is preparing the event as a co-founder of LIMESS (Laboratory of Intelligent Mobility and Energy Systems for Sustainability).
"There is a rivalry between European cities to see who will establish AI Tinkers and be the first to introduce it to the wider tech community. For Prague, it is a success that we have overtaken Dublin and we are just one day away from establishing AI Tinkers in Paris. In Budapest and Warsaw, similar meetings are still in the pipeline," said Miltner, who is working on his PhD at CTU Faculty of Electrical Engineering on the use of AI in sustainable energy and smart mobility.
"The launch of the Prague AI Tinkers is exactly the type of activity that further develops the local ecosystem. What I appreciate most about this globally successful concept is its openness while maintaining the quality of the content. I am convinced that many interesting ideas and projects will come out of the Tinkerers meeting. The fact that it is an initiative of a graduate of our prg.ai Minor program is just a nice bonus," said Lukáš Kačena, director of prg.ai.
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In addition, guests from Silicon Valley - Joe Heitzeberg, one of the organizers of the global AI Tinkers meetings, and Professor Ram Rajagopal from Stanford University, who is also Mark Miltner's mentor-specialist - also came to the kick-off meeting.
Professor Ram Rajagopal gave a talk on AI in the energy sector. This is based on the premise that despite rapid deployment, technologies related to decarbonisation adaptation (such as photovoltaic power plants, electric vehicles and underground power lines) are not equitably accessible to all. In his paper, the professor outlined how artificial intelligence can help provide data to create a national database of solar installations, which would allow for a better understanding of the technology's deployment patterns and inform the design of incentives for equitable solar deployment. Professor Rajagopal's talk also mentioned the potential for improving the availability of AI itself to play a better role in shaping the energy system.
The programme featured six speakers who presented their projects, with space for questions from the audience and discussion after each presentation. Visual artist Lenka Hámošová presented the use of artificial intelligence tools to create creative works of art. Tomas David Ye talked about an app that uses AI to write articles about trending topics on Google and Amazon. This was followed by software developer Pavol Hejný, who outlined the challenges he encountered during his two years of work on improving GPT Chat's promtpbook. Jakub Bareš, a mathematician and entrepreneur, also discussed Chat GPT technology. He described the specific methods used to train this generative language model to produce texts for public speaking. Petr Baudyš gave a talk on creating your own high-quality programming copilot for Vim via Calude 3.5. Designer Julie Dítětová showed one of her latest projects, in which she used machine learning technology to create new textile patterns. Her input data was archival textiles from the 18th century.
The next meeting of AI enthusiasts within AI Tinkers will take place on 15 October 2024, registration is free.