OCTOBER 23, 2023
SHACK15 co-hosts the first-ever TED AI in San Francisco
This October, SHACK15 was proud to co-host the first TED AI in San Francisco. Some of the smartest minds in AI descended upon us to discuss the incredible opportunity that Artificial Intelligence is bringing to the world. We hosted a 24-hour weekend hackathon, an incredible opening party and a robust Day 2 of AI conversations at the shack. TED AI Day 2 was co-hosted by our resident startup community, Cerebral Valley, and saw the likes of Stephen Wolfram, Pedro Domingos and other top AI experts come to give their thoughts on the state of affairs. The AI energy is so real and is truly bringing back San Francisco in full swing!
Multimodal AI Hackathon
On October 14 and 15, SHACK15, in partnership with Cerebral Valley, hosted a Multimodal AI Hackathon that welcomed 200 participants and 31 unique projects over the course of 24 hours. The theme was to build projects with multimodal AI, using voice synthesis AI models and video understanding technology. A total of $18,500 in prizes went out to these winning projects:
NeuroLearn - The brilliance of AI meets the intricacy of the human mind in NeuroLearn, crafting an unprecedented, personalized learning experience taught by your chosen role model, tailored to captivate you.
Pineapple - Hands-free visual reasoning for all
extrapolaTED - Bringing TED experiences to every topic with Gen AI
Partners for the event included ElevenLabs, TwelveLabs, and TEDAI, with sponsorship from Weaviate, Baseten, Pika Labs, Omneky, and Pulze AI.
Judges included various AI industry experts ranging from venture capitalists, researchers, and startup founders.
Judges evaluated projects based on creativity & uniqueness, technical implementation, future potential, and pitching quality.
The TED AI After-Party
After a successful Day 1 of TED AI Talks at the Herbst Theatre, we welcomed the attendees to SHACK15 to commemorate the launch of the TED AI Week 2023. The evening was hosted by SHACK15 members Elle Shelley Black and Sam De Brouwer (organizer for TED AI) with exciting activations from Volta’s audio reactive technology which debuted the Volta XR x DALL-E. Guests were invited to enter a prompt via a live Twitch stream to see their generative art come to life with DJ Rachel Torros’s evening soundscape.
Also featured was ‘F is for Future’ - a short film illuminating each of us as we travel through time and experience technological advancements and future visions, allowing viewers to participate in their own reflection on what type of future they imagine.
October 18 - Day 2 @ SHACK15
Following Day 1 at Herbst Theatre, SHACK15 hosted the attendees for Day 2 with an array of mind-bending panels and workshops featuring the greatest minds in AI today. Notable speakers included Stephen Wolfram, Marily Nika, Jerry Liu, Yohei Nakajima and Vivek Natarajan. See the full list of topics of discussion, speakers and moderators here.
TED AI Talks featured pioneers and trailblazers who investigate the profound implications of how AI will potentially transform the world around us. TED AI is a TED Conference hosted by Chris Anderson, head of TED. TED AI Week 2023 was curated and organized by SHACK15 members Sam & Walter De Brouwer in collaboration with TED.
