BrainChug Series: The Hidden World Behind AI

Come for the talk, stay for the conversations that follow.

Lecture Topic:

The Hidden World Behind AI
What powers it, who shapes it and where it could take us

AI can feel like it arrived almost overnight. But the systems transforming our lives today are the result of decades of choices about what machines should do, how they should learn, and who gets to build them.

Who has the power to shape AI, and who benefits from it? What does its enormous appetite for energy, water, data and infrastructure mean for the world around us? And how might the choices being made today reshape our work, our democracy, our relationships and what we know?

Dr. Stephanie Dick will trace the path that brought us to today’s AI boom and explore the forces shaping where it goes next. Moving beyond whether AI is simply “good” or “bad,” we’ll ask a bigger question: what kind of future are we building with it?

Details:
📍The Stores, Granville, Vancouver
📅 October 26, 2026
🕡 Doors open at 6:30 PM | Lecture starts at 7:15 PM

Meet the Expert:

Dr. Stephanie Dick is an expert on artificial intelligence and a historian of mathematics and technology, with a PhD from Harvard University. Her work explores how AI came to be, who and what shapes its development, and how these technologies are changing our work, institutions and everyday lives. She has spent over 20 years researching and teaching the history and social impact of computing, AI and mathematics, and regularly speaks on the future of work, AI governance and the societal impacts of emerging technologies.

See you there.