Why is Everybody Talking About AI (and what is it anyway?)

Name: Why is Everybody Talking About AI (and what is it anyway?)
Start: 2026-05-28T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-05-28T20:30:00-04:00
Location: Willoughby Wallace Mem Library

Schedule

Thu May 28 2026 at 07:00 pm to 08:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Willoughby Wallace Mem Library | Branford, CT

STONY CREEK FORUM | A Lecture & Ideas Series at the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, invites you to its inaugural event.
About this Event

Why is Everybody Talking about AI (and what is it anyway)?
ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE, or AI, is here. Everywhere. Some of us, many of us, are engaging with. Others, not so much. We don’t trust it, don’t know it, or don’t know how or why. What can it do for us, to us? To give us a sense of what we have here in our lives and in our world, we have invited Jeffrey Davitz to tell us more and answer some of our, your, questions. This is the first talk on the subject. Most likely, not the last one.

The goal of this non-technical talk is to give the audience a feel for what this new (not so new actually) technology is all about. What is it? How does it work? We’ll be really clear about how far we’ve gotten. We’ll then switch over to the good and the bad. How might AI impact us? What might it help with? How might it be bad? Unfortunately, a lot of what is talked about is extreme in both directions, and very unhelpful. The truth is that we don’t know the vast majority of the answers. We are learning as we go and it’s important that all of us participate in how we develop and apply it. We are all going to be impacted, and so we all deserve and need to know about this strange new force in our world.

JEFFREY DAVITZ is an experienced technologist, scientist and entrepreneur. He has managed large and small scale advanced technology and development projects in research (Stanford Research Institute and DARPA) and industry. He’s been a principal in all aspects of start-ups, from developing core technology, raising venture capital and managing business and technical teams. He has founded is own ventures and consulted with start-ups and large companies. He did his PhD in Applied Statistics at Columbia University and during graduate school did research at the Complex Systems Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jeffrey lives in Stony Creek.