Beyond the Chatbot: A Tour of the AI Universe (w/ The AI Collective, Chatt*Lab)

​LLMs are everywhere right now; and for good reason. They create much leverage. We will talk about this.

​BUUUUUUT. They're one corner of a much bigger landscape, and some of the most consequential AI breakthroughs of the last decade weren't language models at all.

​AlphaGo. AlphaFold. Stable Diffusion. They're built on completely different ideas, stacked in completely different ways.

​This month, we're taking a tour of that wider universe. We'll start with what's actually working in production today, walk through the game-changers most people have heard of but never really looked inside, and end at the research frontier where things get strange (mostly in a good way).

​No lab coat required. Just stories, metaphors, and a willingness to be curious.

1:00 – 1:15 - Settling in, food, announcements (15 min)
1:15 – 2:00 - Round table: Gen AI in production, what's actually adding business value (45 min)
2:00 - 2:05 - 5-minute Yoga sesh. Probably..
2:05 – 2:45 - The Other game-changers no one really thinks about (40 min)

• ​AlphaGo

• ​AlphaFold

• ​Stable Diffusion / Midjourney

• ​AlphaProof / AlphaGeometry

​2:45 – 3:00 - Intermission (15 min)
3:00 – 3:45 - Tour of the AI landscape: paradigms beyond LLMs (45 min)

• ​Evolutionary methods (GA, ES, CMA-ES, NEAT, genetic programming, swarm)

• ​Energy-based models (Hopfield, Boltzmann machines, score-based, diffusion)

• ​Neurosymbolic AI

• ​Honorable Mentions

​3:45 - 3:50 - We all attempt handstands (optional)
3:50 – 4:30 - Research-level deep dive discussion: hierarchical evolutionary systems with orchestration (40 min)
4:30 – 5:00 - Open Q&A, mingling, wind-down (30 min)

​Please be advised: Unfortunately, space is very limited at these community events and we can not always accept everyone we would like to. If you are not accepted to this event, please keep applying! We appreciate your application tremendously and we are looking forward to seeing you at a future event very soon!

​The AI Collective is a global non-profit building the human layer for the AI era. We unite 200,000+ leaders, builders, and stakeholders across 100+ forums worldwide to democratize the frontier, build trust, and coordinate how society navigates the rapid acceleration of technological progress.

​All attendees and organizers at events affiliated with The AI Collective agree to our privacy policy and are subject to our code of conduct.