I was knee-deep in pandemic farming on Galiano Island when AI reached out and yanked me back into the matrix. As a techartist and community builder who’s been riding waves of digital transformation since the late ’90s, I’ve seen my share of technological revolutions. From building websites to put myself through college, to documenting the BP oil spill for National Geographic and shooting Jack White for Rolling Stone, to leading the open-source web hosting revolution in 2004 – I’ve always found myself at the intersection of technology, creativity, and community empowerment.
But this was different. November 2022. Someone shows me Midjourney. By midnight, I’ve started a Discord server, not wanting to fumble around in public where everyone else seemed to have their shit together. Within a month, that server grew from 5 friends to 50 collaborators – fellow travelers from my decades in the tech and creative scenes, from Silicon Valley journalists to New York artists. Today? We’re over a thousand strong – a mycelial network of creators, technologists, and dreamers all trying to make sense of this AI revolution together.
The Ground Truth
Here’s what they’re not telling you about BC’s creative economy: we’ve built something unique here, but it’s more fragile than anyone wants to admit. While the establishment was busy commissioning $500,000 reports on “AI readiness,” actual AI was transforming creative work in real-time. While tech incubators were hosting invite-only panels about “future AI potential,” small studios across Vancouver were already using AI to revolutionize their workflows.
Those junior positions in creative industries? The ones where you take a senior designer’s vision and adapt it for different platforms? That’s AI territory now. We’re staring down 30% workforce displacement in the creative sector. Traditional industry associations are playing defense, but you can’t defend against the future. You have to shape it.
The Underground Current
While the official channels were worrying about control, something beautiful was happening at the grassroots. Our monthly AI meetups grew from a handful of curious minds to over a thousand strong. Not your usual tech bros and venture capitalists – we’re talking poets collaborating with professors, students challenging CEOs, Indigenous knowledge keepers sharing wisdom with startup founders.
This isn’t just networking; it’s a mycorrhizal network of innovation, spreading through the creative underground of BC. Like mycelium in a thriving forest, our strength lies in our interconnectedness. Each node in our network—whether it’s a VFX studio in Vancouver, an AI research lab at SFU SIAT, or an indie game studio in Mount Pleasant—feeds and strengthens the whole.
Last month, I watched a filmmaker use AI to generate an entire storyboard in minutes, then collaborate with a room full of creators to push it in directions no algorithm could have imagined. The week before, a musician trained an AI on their back catalog to create new compositions that maintained their unique style while exploring uncharted sonic territories.
The Innovation Underground
Take a walk with me through BC’s real AI landscape:
At SFU’s Meta Creation Lab, we’re flipping the script on AI art. I fed 25 years of my photography – every cross-processed portrait, every captured moment – into a blank-slate AI. Not just to make pretty pictures, but to prove a point: we can train AI on our own terms, with our own work, maintaining our creative sovereignty. The results aren’t just technically impressive; they’re ethically sound.
Over at Volumetric Capture Systems, they’re building camera arrays that make The Matrix look like a flip book. 250 synchronized 8K cameras in a geodesic dome, capturing reality with AI-enhanced depth perception. When Vegas called for Anyma residency at the Sphere, this BC crew built it in VR before setting foot on site. That’s the kind of innovation that happens when you let creators play with technology.
Then there’s Suzanne Gildert at Nirvanic AI. After co-founding D-Wave and Sanctuary AI, she’s asking questions that keep Silicon Valley up at night. What if AI needs consciousness to be truly safe? Her work isn’t just pushing technical boundaries – it’s challenging fundamental assumptions about what AI can and should be.
The Reckoning
I’ve been watching our institutions grapple with this change. Met a principal from Austin who threw out the traditional playbook – no teachers in the classroom, just two hours of AI-assisted learning daily, everything else focused on human development. Results? Through the roof.
Meanwhile, in BC, we’re still using AI detectors to criminalize students trying to adapt. Our former Minister of Innovation pointed out these tools mostly flag newcomers trying to perfect their English. We’re punishing adaptation instead of fostering it.
The traditional industry bodies have failed to:
- Create accessible AI training programs for displaced creative workers
- Develop clear guidelines for AI usage in government-funded projects
- Support small studios and independents in adopting AI tools
- Address the immediate ethical concerns of AI-generated content
- Build bridges between the tech and creative communities
Instead, they’ve been stuck in an endless cycle of consultations, committees, and reports that are outdated before they’re even published.
The Path Forward
Here’s what needs to happen:
- $30M for a BC AI Ethics Lab: Montreal did it with Mila – 700 researchers strong, keeping Canadian values at the heart of innovation. We need our own center of gravity.
- Community-Driven Innovation: The walls between academia, industry, and community need to come down. Innovation happens at the intersections, in the spaces between established structures.
- Education Revolution: When AI tutoring can boost performance by 25%, we need to rethink everything. Not just new tools – new paradigms for learning and development.
- Physical Spaces Matter: In a digital world, human connection becomes more valuable, not less. Our institutions need to be hubs of human activity first, traditional learning centers second.
The Call
Listen, I’ve been around long enough to see multiple tech revolutions. From the early web to social media to now. Each time, the establishment played catch-up while the real innovation happened at the edges. This time doesn’t have to be like that.
The next chapter of BC’s creative industries is being written right now. With Web Summit Vancouver 2025 approaching and the world’s eyes on Vancouver, we have a chance to showcase a different model of innovation – one built from the ground up, powered by community, guided by ethics.
This isn’t some tech utopia pitch. It’s about survival, identity, and the future of BC’s soul in an age where AI could either erase or enhance it. The path we choose now doesn’t just affect our jobs or economy – it shapes what it means to be human in an AI world.
The Personal Edge
Through all this digital transformation, I’ve realized something profound: the only thing I’ve got over these computers is a body and the ability to experience life through it. That’s not a limitation; it’s a superpower.
I tried this myself, feeding 50 pages of my writing into AI, having it build a personal style guide. Now when I’m working with AI, it knows my voice from the outset. It’s not about replacing your creativity – it’s about amplifying what makes you uniquely you.
The Global Stage
While Texas pours $500 billion into their AI future, surprisingly a huge percentage of BC startup investment already comes from there. Durning my participation in the AI Ecosystem Working Group at SFUs Dialogue on Technology project, I’ve seen how policy makers are hungry for new models of innovation. They’re realizing the traditional industry association approach isn’t enough. We need something more organic, more alive.
Here’s what I’ve learned running a CBC show exploring AI’s cultural impact, organizing meetups where different worldviews collide, and building bridges between academia and industry:
- Community Beats Credentials: The most innovative solutions come from unexpected collaborations. At our meetups, I’ve seen artists and engineers solve problems that stumped the experts.
- Experience Trumps Theory: While institutions debate AI policy, creators are building real solutions. One of our community members trained an AI on Indigenous language patterns, creating a tool that helps preserve oral traditions.
- Ethics Through Practice: You don’t build ethical AI by writing guidelines in boardrooms. You build it by having diverse voices in the room when the technology is being created.
Every day I’m seeing proof that BC’s approach – this organic, community-driven innovation – works better than the top-down models being pushed elsewhere. But we’re at a critical moment. The suits are starting to notice. They’re going to try to corporatize this movement, to turn it into something they can control and monetize.
Don’t let them.
This is our chance to show that there’s a different way to develop AI. One that respects creativity, honors community, and builds technology that serves human flourishing rather than just corporate profits.
The Adaptability Paradox
Here’s the thing about being on the frontlines of technological change: you start to see patterns. I’ve watched three waves of digital revolution crash through our creative industries. Each time, the people who thrived weren’t the ones with the most resources or the best connections. They were the ones who could adapt fastest while staying true to their core purpose.
That’s the paradox we’re facing now. The more AI can do, the more important our human qualities become. While the establishment is focused on controlling AI, we should be focused on cultivating what AI can’t replicate: our lived experience, our cultural context, our ability to connect deeply with other humans.
I’m seeing this play out in real time at our meetups. A First Nations artist using AI to preserve traditional stories while adding new layers of interactivity. A sound designer teaching AI to recognize emotional resonance in music. A filmmaker using AI to prototype ideas that would have been too expensive to test otherwise. They’re not replacing their creativity with AI – they’re expanding what’s possible.
The Real Work
Want to know what real AI innovation looks like? It’s not happening in glass towers or government innovation hubs. It’s happening in places like:
- The basement studio where a game designer is teaching AI to understand cultural nuance
- The community center where seniors are learning to use AI to preserve their life stories
- The indie film collective using AI to make Hollywood-level effects on Vancouver budgets
Every week I run into another example of grassroots innovation that makes corporate AI initiatives look like they’re playing catch-up. But here’s what keeps me up at night: if we don’t claim this moment, someone else will. The venture capitalists, the tech giants, the innovation consultants – they’re all circling, ready to package and commodify what we’ve built.
The Future We Choose
W’ve spent 15 months building something real here. Not a startup, not a product – a movement. A community of people who understand that AI isn’t just another technology to be deployed or defended against. It’s a fundamental shift in how we create, how we work, how we express ourselves.
The next few months are crucial. As Web Summit approaches, the spotlight will be on Vancouver. We can either show the world a different way forward – one built on community, creativity, and ethical innovation – or we can let the usual suspects turn our grassroots revolution into another corporate case study.
This isn’t just about AI. It’s about whether BC becomes another tech hub churning out products for the highest bidder, or whether we become something new: a place where technology serves human flourishing, where innovation grows from the ground up, where creativity and community drive progress.
The mycelial network is growing. The questions is: are you going to be part of it?
Don’t wait for permission. Don’t wait for funding. Don’t wait for the “right time.”
The future is being coded right now, in basements and community centers, in indie studios and art collectives. Join us. The revolution isn’t just coming.
It’s already here.
Discover more from Kris Krüg | Generative AI Tools & Techniques
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.