Creative Realities Report - Sherry

One of the highlights of Techweek 2018 was the Creative Realities event in Wellington. With the help of the organisers, we were able to support 3 students to attend. Here's some highlights shared by Sherry:

The conference was very informative and some content really blew me away.

One of the most impressive parts was a breakout session - Sparking Creativity with AI hosted by IBM NZ. Through the engaging 1.5 hours, I had a taste of the advanced power of IBM Watson, including how it could empower people to quickly make applications without writing code, and how easy to build a customised chatbot. The two speakers - Isuru Fernando and Giovanni Vigorelli mixed storytelling, role play, making demo on-site and wise humour to walk us through a wide range of capabilities that existing AI technology can augment human. Also, as a designer, it was great to see they introducing design thinking to the audience, many of whom were from different backgrounds.

At the end of this session, instead of answering their opening question 'Can AI be creative?', they shifted the perspective 'Can AI help you be creative?'. And the answer with a concept of 'Method (AI) + Magic (Human)' was very convincing for me. I'm glad to go through the whole interactive journey with them and leave with an inspired mind.

Another mind-blowing talk was about Soul Machines by Shona Grundy. She introduced Soul Machines's Hi-tech humanised AI and how they have been applied in the real life. Shona's talk brought something that might exist in a sci-fi movie to the present, which made me realise how close we are to the future that we thought was far away. At the end of her talk, she was also brave to raise the big question before being asked — will humans lose jobs because of AI? While giving a firm answer of 'yes', I favour her opinion that humans are supposed to do things that they really enjoy and keep them creative.

There were many more highlights of the conference and lots of lovely people. I'm grateful to be part of these juicy discussions about the inspirational present and future.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us, Sherry, and huge thanks to the Creative Realities organisers for making it possible for SoT students to attend.