AI Day and Town Hall kick off the San José Cinequest Film Festival on Wednesday, bringing the community to have an open discussion about artificial intelligence.
Cinequest is a 10-day Film Festival at the Hammer Theater that showcases several different movies and hosts a variety of discussion panels.
Jeff Klaben, an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University, started AI Day and Town Hall.
“(It’s) taking what our local governments doing and what our creative community’s doing and (making) it safer and accessible,” Klaben said.
The festival included several activities starting with an open discussion with community members and ending with a speech from San José Mayor Matt Mahan.
Klaben said he sees this wave of AI technology overtaking society and it has a lot of promise, but a lot of people are scared.
“I bear a little bit of guilt too because part of my career has been working with cyber security and developing AI,” Klaben said. “I feel like I have a responsibility to make sure it goes out in the world and it benefits people.”
AI is referred to as Artificial Intelligence, it is a technology that helps computers and machines to emulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities according to a webpage from the International Business Machines Corporation.
In recent years, AI has sparked fear surrounding job stability, lack of security, and impersonation according to an article for the website Scientific American.
A study conducted by The Pew Research Center found that 52% of Americans feel more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI.
Facilitator and volunteer for the Cinequest film festival, Cathy Simpson said she has had an incredible experience facilitating open spaces for years.
“If people don’t talk, we [carry] all our thoughts and sometimes they can get way out of proportion,” Simpson said. “But if we talk about it, we can hear people’s concerns and make informed decisions.”
Simpson asked audience members to put ideas on an empty board to create an agenda of topics that the groups were interested in discussing with one another.
“Today is this opportunity for us to come together as a community and for each of you to be able to express yourselves, your concerns, your questions,” Simpson said.
Topic suggestions ranged from plagiarism in art, how AI can assist seniors, and AI’s aid in personal development.
Klaben said he hoped the festival and open discussion, improvised discussion would foster a space in which people could listen and possibly change their mindset.
“Creativity isn’t a natural born skill, it’s a way of thinking and operating,” Klaben said. “These tools give people a chance to experience creativity firsthand and not just watch it.”
Artistic director of ComedySportz and facilitator, Jeff Kramer helped to implement aspects of improv into the open discussion.
“AI is a tool but improv is also a tool and it’s how we use [those] tools,” Kramer said. “But do you have the creative mindset to be able to use these tools intentionally and see what you can build out of it.”
Kramer said that having improv tools can help people to listen to one another but also build on each other’s ideas.
Once the discussion sessions were done attendees came together to reflect upon how their conversations went.
Kramer asked the group to start their reflections with the statements “I wish”, “I liked” or “What if”.
These statements help to provide feedback in an organized and constructive way according to a PDF from the Interaction Design Foundation.
Many of the audience members said they wished they had more time to continue their discussion, while others stated their experiences.
An audience member said that talking about a topic like this, with people of different ages and in different stages of their lives allowed people to see the impact AI has on everyone.
“I really liked that a dream [of] a community can have a conversation and cross-pollinate [to] take some fear and confusion from AI and has manifested into something beautiful here,” Klaben said.
