On May 6, 2025, we launched the BC + AI Ecosystem Association. Not because we love meetings or needed another acronym, but because someone has to ask the hard questions while everyone else is busy trying to train artificial intelligence how to print money.
Like: Who gets to decide what “intelligent” means when you live on unceded territory? Or: What happens to a creative economy built on human skill when algorithms can fake that skill better than most humans?
We gathered 225++ people who’ve been quietly building the future while everyone else argues about it on LinkedIn. Indigenous technologists, software artists, startup builders, researchers, the kind of people who debug code at 2am and question capitalism over breakfast.
The Honest Truth About Where We Are
British Columbia accidentally built one of the world’s most functional creative economies. Those glass towers in Olympic Village? They exist because DigiBC fought for tax credits that brought 11 of the top 12 game studios here. VFS pumps out graduates who staff the VFX houses that make the Marvel movies. The whole thing works because government, education, and industry actually coordinated instead of just talking about it.
We’ve got 300+ AI companies and billions in recent investment. But here’s what the innovation reports don’t mention: generative AI is already eating this economy from the inside.
I know VFX artists who spent decades learning to composite who now watch AI do their work faster than they can open After Effects. Game developers training neural networks to replace the asset creation that employs half their studio. Musicians competing with AI that learned songwriting from every song ever recorded.
The question isn’t whether AI will transform creative work. It already has. The question is whether we get to participate in designing what comes next, or just react to changes imposed by people who’ve never spent a day in a Canadian creative economy.
From Industry to Ecosystem
We could try to out-Silicon Valley Silicon Valley. Build faster, scale harder, optimize everything. But that’s like trying to out-Amazon Amazon. You might win temporarily, but you become the thing you’re competing against.
Instead, we’re building something they can’t: AI infrastructure rooted in place, relationships, and values that actually matter to the people who live here.
Real ecosystems don’t scale. They evolve. They don’t disrupt. They adapt. They don’t extract value. They create conditions for multiple species to thrive.
That’s what we’re prototyping: an ecosystem approach to intelligence infrastructure. Where traditional cultural knowledge systems inform sovereign data governance. Where artists get to train models on their own work instead of having it stolen. Where the benefits of automation go to workers, not just shareholders.
The Anti-Hype Manifesto
Every AI conference is the same tired script: exponential growth, paradigm shifts, the future is here. Meanwhile, the actual future is being built by people who know that technology is only as good as the values embedded in its design.
We’re not selling the future. We’re building it, one decision at a time.
We don’t move fast and break things. We move thoughtfully and fix things. We don’t optimize for engagement. We optimize for understanding. We don’t disrupt industries. We heal them.
At our Vancouver AI meetups, we end every gathering with Kushal challenging whatever consensus emerged, forcing us to question our assumptions. Because the moment you stop questioning, you start becoming what you originally set out to change.
What We’re Actually Building
This Association isn’t a think tank that produces reports no one reads. It’s infrastructure for the conversations and collaborations that matter.
We run AI data storytelling hackathons that ask questions like “What does it mean to be Canadian in the age of AI?” because someone needs to explore what intelligence looks like when it’s informed by universal healthcare, Indigenous sovereignty, and the kind of civic infrastructure that keeps society functional.
We publish research in academic journals because ideas matter, but we also maintain a thriving groupchat where people actually help each other ship things. We map funding landscapes not to chase grants, but to understand how public money shapes private innovation.
We’re building bc-ai.net as a resource hub, but more importantly, we’re building relationships between people who are building the future we want to live in.
An Invitation to Get Real
This isn’t a product launch. It’s not a networking opportunity. It’s not a brand.
It’s a bet that regions can shape their own technological futures if they’re willing to do the work. That intelligence—artificial and otherwise—can serve communities instead of just consuming them. That we can build systems that grow more beautiful and functional over time instead of just more profitable.
If you’re building something that serves more than just yourself, you’re already part of this. If you’re asking harder questions than “How do we scale this?” you belong here. If you’re tired of watching the future get built by people who’ve never lived in the places they’re reshaping, come build it with us.
The revolution won’t be optimized. It will be intentional.
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