Wednesday, 16th September 7pm
Want to know more about AI?
SolidGoldMagikarp - A Descent into the AI Underworld a book by Matthew Watkins is a gripping descent into the hidden psychology of AI, and the strange subcultures trying to control it before it destroys us!
Watkins will be in conversation with Latham about the book and how his time in Berkeley, California studying a precursor to ChatGPT led to mind-boggling discoveries and ultimately, some hope for humankind.
Mathematician Matthew Watkins is also a local historian, DJ, psychonaut and 'the most exhiliratingly intelligent author of the thousands I have met' , says Dr Martin Latham, author of the Penguin paperback The Booksellers Tale, and Waterstones Canterbury Manager 1990-2025.
An innocuous looking trigger word sent a frontier language model into what looked like full-blown paranoia. Was it a simple bug? A trail of breadcrumbs left by whistleblowers? Or a glimpse into how AI really thinks?
The search for answers pulls Watkins into the sci-fi world of AI safety research. In this rapidly expanding domain, the line between science and belief blurs: billionaires play god while rogue chatbots win fortunes and cult followings. What starts as a computer mystery becomes something much bigger: both a window into the eerie inner worlds of large language models.
‘Top notch. Unfolding like a nerdy occult techno-thriller, Watkins tells the weird tale of how he discovered two ghosts in the LLM machine - ‘glitch tokens’ whose uncanny behavior makes it clear, at least, that AI will enchant as much as it will disrupt. The deets are important, and Watkins presents them with care and clarity. But equally valuable is his dry Gen X take on certain Bay Area-correlated pockets of the AI alignment scene whose cultural peculiarities continue to shape our visions of the technological future.’ - ERIK DAVIS, author of HIGH WEIRDNESS
‘Watkins was the sole witness to the weirdest - and perhaps most important - story in AI. His rigorous obsession with this mystery will become yours.’ - CULLEN HOBACK, director of MONEY ELECTRIC
Thursday 10 September
7:30pm
Almost certainly, yes, and you do not need to be technical. Not a bit, not secretly, not "well, I did a course once".
FAM is for everybody, but specially for people who make things: illustrators, filmmakers, producers, sound people, designers, writers, anybody working in or around the creative industries that have suddenly got a lot to argue about. You do not need to understand how any of this works to have a useful opinion about what it is doing to your work, and the people who do understand how it works are, on the whole, keen to explain it to you at the bar.
Some people coming are excited about all of it. Some are angry about all of it. Quite a few will be both, on the same evening, about the same thing. All of that is welcome, so long as you extend the same patience to the person standing next to you that you would want extended to you.
Nobody is selling anything from the front. There is no recruiter working the room and no pitch at the end. It is a room, some chairs, a projector and a bar.
And since this is the very first one: there is no in-crowd to be outside of. Everybody there will be working out what it is at the same time you are.
If it helps to know where the line is before you come: read the code of conduct. It is short and we mean it.
More info here:
This is one of our favourite events at kollectiv!
World-renowned novelist and music amateur, Michel Faber shares a selection tracks from his varied record collection - some obscure, some unbelievable, some never to be heard again. Each piece is accompanied by a story stranger than fiction.
Join this listening experience where strangers are brought together through music.
It’s a fun evening where you will be mesmerised.
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