Bohemian Ideas from a Disco Dancefloor

This is an excerpt of a substack blog post. See the original article here

Last Sunday, after too many hours indoors working on Ambistream’s new dataroom and site updates, I finally stepped outside. I ended up at the Manhattan Monster Bar’s monthly 70s disco tea dance. The music was great and I ran into some people I haven’t seen in a while.

While dancing (actually I tend to bounce around more than dance) I started thinking about how much cultural energy comes out of these kinds of spaces. The downtown scene has always had that. Romany Marie’s cafés in the 1910s and 30s were full of painters, anarchists, poets, and weirdos swapping ideas. It was more about cross-pollination instead of credentials. And I think we need more of that around AI.

So I’m hosting an AI salon next Monday, October 6, from 6:30pm–9pm, as part of #AIWeekNY. No formal talks. No panels. Just a gathering of people from different backgrounds having a real conversation about where AI is headed, what it’s doing to culture, and how we might shape it differently.

If you’re in NYC and want to come, you can request to join here. It’s designed to be intimate and conversational on purpose.

Here are a few of the questions I’ve been asking people who want to attend:

• Are you cautious about AI, or all in?

• What’s your relationship to AI in one sentence?

• What question do you think we’re not asking enough?

Even if you’re not coming, feel free to send me your answers. These are questions I want to hear different perspectives on, especially outside the usual tech echo chambers.

I’ll also be sharing some new features from Ambistream that night, including our latest work on multi-layered casting and protocol-based remix licensing. And while I’m in town for the next few weeks, I’m meeting with folks around partnerships, creative collabs, and pre-seed conversations. If that sounds like something we should talk about, reach out.