"We have AI at Home" - Privacy-First Local AI Workshop
Date: Saturday March 22nd, 2025
Time: 1:00-3:00pm
Location: 379 Adelaide St. W, 4th Floor, Toronto ON
What to bring: Laptop (Windows, M-series Mac, or Linux) if you'd like to follow along during the workshop - no pressure to do so!
Not a fan of handing your data, conversations, and ideas to the likes of OpenAI, Google, and the other big tech companies? Fear no more - local AI has become more accessible than ever!
In this workshop, you'll learn about free no-code (but developer-accessible!) tools that you can use on your computer at home to run AI language models.
Topics covered include:
- AI terminology and practical concepts
- Pros & Cons of local (offline) and cloud-based (online) models
- Free tools for using AI without your data leaving your computer
- Various applications and use cases with examples demonstrated live via free tools
Possible topic coverage depending on audience interest:
- Applications for specific fields (new media arts, research, programming, etc.)
- Interfacing with local AI via basic code examples
- Multimodal models
- Let me know your topic of interest and I'll try to cover it!
Notes and documentation of all the content covered will be provided to participants after the workshop. Presented in partnership with UKAI Projects.
About the organizer:
I (Benjamin Lappalainen) am a creative technologist, freelance software developer, and multidisciplinary artist from Toronto, ON.
My artistic practice revolves around the architecting and programming of systems that create and interpret visuals and sound, with a focus on playfulness and sustainability.
I believe that most technology is capable of doing both good and bad regardless of the creator’s intentions, and it’s up to us to educate ourselves on how to use it for good.
AI is no different.
