This one-day online workshop offers practical training, live demos, and group activities that will help every public servant understand how AI and agents will change the public service.
Taught by Alistair Croll, who chaired the world’s largest AI and Data Science conference (Strata) for a decade and helped create the Data Science and Critical Thinking course at Harvard Business School, this will go beyond vendor hype and hot takes to help government employees rethink digital services in an AI era.
This won’t be another “what is AI and how does it work?” lecture; instead, it’s the result of months of hands-on development, testing, and research.
The workshop isn't a traditional FWD50 format, either. Rather than a series of talks and panels with clear start and stop times, this is a deep, interactive session that will include presentations, activities, and opportunities for open discussion. It's not designed for attendees to "drop in" to certain sessions, as the content builds on itself throughout the day.
With that in mind, here is a rough outline of how the workshop will unfold. All times are approximate and subject to change; this is a day-long interactive session, and we'll adapt the timing to accommodate the attendees' questions and interest.
- 10:00 AM ET: Some context: Putting the rise of generative AI into perspective, compared to other historical shifts.
- 10:45 AM ET: How it works: A historical view of the building blocks of modern AI, from classification to embeddings to attention, and what AI is doing under the hood.
<Short break 11:15 AM ET - 11:30 AM ET>
- 11:30 AM ET: Applying AI today: Even if you're not able to use AI in your job, you can still get started. We'll look at some proven ways to trial AI approaches within organizations.
<Lunch: 12:30 PM ET - 1:30 PM ET>
- 1:30 PM ET: What lies ahead? It's called a singularity for a reason—but even if we can't predict where AI is taking humanity, we can look at first principles to see the shape of what's to come.
<Short break 2:30 PM - 2:45 PM>
- 3:00 PM: Some reasonable proposals: AI is one of the most polarizing inventions in history. Some can't wait for its arrival; others see it as the unraveling of society itself. How might we rein in runaway tech while still reaping the rewards of automated cognition?
- 3:30 PM: Closing remarks: Wrap-up and suggestions, plus Q&A.
