Video Spotlight: Demystifying artificial intelligence by design

Pop-up exhibit gives visitors a hands-on introduction to the basics of technology that is reshaping the world.


The assignment was to convey AI research projects to a general audience in the University of Alberta’s Artificial Intelligence Discovery Place, a new research and collaboration hub in Edmonton’s downtown Enterprise Square.

The presentation had to be clear and accessible to everyone from local entrepreneurs to high school students. But the four recent graduates of the U of A’s bachelor of design program quickly realized it was impossible to grasp the research without understanding the basics of AI, such as machine learning, reinforcement learning, and text and image generation.

So Autumn Sanders, Farhan Asif, Senuda Wettasinghe and Teagan Macneil set out to create a pop-up exhibit that would introduce visitors to first principles with easy-to-understand, interactive displays before they move on to the presentation of research.