​The AI Ethical Futures Lab is a community-driven initiative within the BC + AI Ecosystem Association, dedicated to fostering responsible AI development through collaborative research, policy engagement, and ethical framework development.

​We bridge the gap between AI innovation and ethical implementation, ensuring British Columbia leads in building trustworthy, inclusive, and community-centered AI systems.

​Who owns what when machines learn from everything?

​An artist's portfolio trains a model they never consented to. A musician's voice gets cloned. A writer finds their style replicated at scale. Meanwhile, some creators are leaning in... experimenting with AI as collaborator, tool, or medium.

​We're not here to relitigate the obvious harms. We're here to explore the harder questions: What does ethical creative AI look like? What do artists actually want? Where's the line between inspiration, reference, and theft... and does AI change that line?

​April 1st. Parker Street Studios.

​What This Is

​A discussion circle. Not a panel. Not a workshop. Just a room of people who care about this stuff, talking it through.

​We'll open with a short framing (10 minutes max), then move into facilitated conversation. Bring your questions, your frustrations, your experiments. Whether you're an artist wrestling with AI in your practice, a technologist thinking about creative ethics, or someone trying to make sense of where this is headed... your perspective matters.

​The venue shapes the conversation: We're in Tanya Slingsby's art studio. The work on the walls is human-made. The questions we're asking are about what that means now.

​Questions We Might Explore

• ​What would ethical AI training actually look like for creative work?

• ​Is there a difference between AI learning from your work and a human learning from your work?

• ​When does AI become a legitimate creative collaborator vs. a replacement?

• ​What do artists lose when their style becomes reproducible at scale?

• ​How do we build consent into systems designed to scrape everything?

• ​What rights should creators have over their digital fingerprint?

• ​Are there uses of AI in creative work that feel right? What makes them different?

​We won't answer all of these. We might not answer any. But we'll think together.

​Who Should Come

• ​Artists: visual, audio, written, performance, any medium

• ​Creators wrestling with AI: whether you're using it, avoiding it, or both

• ​Technologists: especially if you build tools that touch creative work

• ​Lawyers, policy folks: copyright, IP, the legal landscape

• ​Anyone curious: you don't have to be an expert, just willing to engage

​Come with a question. Something you're actually wondering about. It doesn't have to be polished.

​What We're Building

​The AI Ethical Futures Lab is a community-driven initiative within the BC + AI Ecosystem, dedicated to fostering responsible AI development through collaborative research, policy engagement, ethical framework development, and, above all, open discourse.

​We bridge the gap between AI innovation and ethical consideration, ensuring British Columbia leads in building trustworthy, inclusive, and community-centered AI systems.

​Our approach

​Community-First Ethics: Ethical AI emerges from diverse voices, not corporate boardrooms. We out Indigenous knowledge systems, grassroots perspectives, and lived experiences front and centre.

​Our policy-meets-practice philosophy translates ethical frameworks into actionable guidelines for developers, policymakers, and organizations implementing AI systems.

​We champion open processes, clear accountability mechanisms, and inclusive decision-making from design to governance with human-welbeing the perpetual North Star.

​​About BC + AI Ecosystem Association

​​BC + AI is the province-wide layer: a community-driven, nonprofit industry association built to create public-interest infrastructure for AI in British Columbia.

​​Not a corporate lobby. Not a think tank. A commons where meetups turn into working groups, prototypes turn into shared tools, and community values turn into governance.

​​
Vancouver AI was just the start. The ecosystem keeps growing across BC... Surrey, Comox Valley, Squamish, and beyond... each node bringing its own culture, needs, and experiments.

​​Join support: https://bc-ai.ca/membership