Talks

27 talks have been given at Flower City AI in Rochester, New York.

2025

Wednesday December 3, 2025 at The Little Theatre

Who Pays for AI's Power? Carbon Costs and Community Impact

Madhura Anand

AI's rapid expansion drives large-scale energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and resource extraction. Training and serving large models consume significant electricity; data center cooling and power provisioning increase local water and...

Can conflict be resolved?

Jess Kent

Conflict resolution (ex. Mediation and conflict coaching) has existed within the court system, legal system, and community structures for ages. But, artificial intelligence is changing the game of how disputes are discussed and resolved....

AGI Is Already Here, It's Just Slow‚ and We've Already Lost Control of It

Zack Glick

Artificial General Intelligence is not just a future possibility. it already exists in the form of corporations. These legal entities own property, act autonomously, and continue beyond the lives of their founders. The key difference...

The Rochester Finger Lakes Metro AI Leadership Initiative

Gerard Fisher, MBA, PhD

A $100 Million Philanthropic Investment to Transform Our Region into a Global AI Hub

Healthcare AI, Built from Within: A Human-Centered Approach to Innovation

Carly Hochreiter

Clinicians today face increasing cognitive burdens, particularly around chart review, which contribute to burnout and reduced satisfaction. At the same time, patient trust can erode if a provider appears unaware of new diagnoses or...

New York's First High School AI Course: Teaching the Next Generation

George Goga

AI is no longer science fiction. It's shaping how we learn, work, and live. But most students graduate without ever being taught what AI actually is or how it affects their world. That's about to change. This January, Geneva High School...

Coder to Orchestrator: Mastering System Design in the Age of Vibe Coding

Graham Anthony

Vibe coding is the practice of using AI to generate code from natural language. This process has democratized software development in unprecedented ways. Non-technical founders now build functional MVPs in hours, junior developers...

Startup Grind Pitch Battle

Michael Thaney

Three finalists from Startup Grind's AI Pitch Battle present their startup to the audience.

See the full 2025 agenda

2024

Wednesday December 4, 2024 at The Little Theatre

Navigating the Future of Learning: AI’s Influence on Higher Education

Katie Sabourin

Generative AI is a disruptive innovation in education, challenging traditional methods and compelling institutions to rethink pedagogical approaches, redefine roles, and embrace new tools to stay relevant in an evolving landscape. In this...

An AI Case study: Sign-Speak, the Real-Time Sign Language AI

Nicholas Wilkins

Join us for an in-depth exploration of Sign-Speak’s journey, from ideation to deployment, in creating cutting-edge real-time sign language AI technology. This session will highlight the challenges faced, key lessons learned, and insights...

Decoding Better Encodings

Chad Gueli

Every business has documents with unstructured yet valuable information. Accessing these insights improves decision making but has conventionally come at a high cost in time and effort. Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) leverages...

Measuring the effectiveness of ChatGPT as a writing assistant

Tim Snedden

When ChatGPT first arrived on the scene as a writer, I was intimidated. There was much hype on one side and fear on the other. To combat this I designed an experiment to test GPTs for professional-grade writing projects. We discovered that...

Dead Internet Theory

Caelan Gold

Dead Internet Theory is the claim that most of the internet’s content: websites, articles, posts, forums, videos, are mostly generated by algos, AIs, and bots (oh my) in order to streamline people to subservient thinking on political...

Artificial Intelligence for Business

Crisandra Harrison, Anjaly George

Explore how to apply business strategies to identify AI applications and implement them to boost profitability. Designed for AI enthusiasts at all levels, this session breaks down the key steps for integrating AI technologies to enhance...

The Future Has No Managers

Hernan Chiosso

In the very near future, the role of "manager" as we know it will become obsolete. This isn't just speculation – we're already seeing the signs: Individual contributors are out-earning their managers, AI is taking over traditional...

Towards Responsible Tech for AI Startups

Valerie Carey

Responsible AI development includes privacy safeguards, transparency, quality assurance, and legal compliance. Even large organizations struggle to implement effective frameworks in a fast-changing technology landscape. Small companies and...

See the full 2024 agenda

2023

Wednesday December 6, 2023 at The Little Theatre

SAPIEN Chat

Masum Hasan

We are building a platform of virtual humans backed by state-of-the-art Large Language Models and Computer Vision systems, that will allow you to have highly realistic interactions with virtual humans in a way that has never been possible...

Tympana for No-Code Data-Centric AI

Paul Yacci, Allison Yacci

Tympana, a powerful web-based platform that brings Machine Learning tools to the hands of the domain experts. Tympana assists scientists in building high quality Machine Learning models for their complex data, allowing them to scale their...

Building an AI Community with Ruby

Landon Gray

Have you ever considered building a machine learning model in Ruby? It may surprise you to learn that you can train, build, and deploy ML models in Ruby. But what are the benefits of using Ruby over other languages? In this talk, we'll...

Racing Towards Responsibility: Why AI Developers Must Lead on Ethics

Mark Weber

As AI rapidly advances, developers must swiftly implement ethical frameworks, rather than wait for government regulation. This talk will provide examples of major tech companies facing backlash over AI's failures, from perpetuating...

Revolutionizing Healthcare Spending: A Predictive Approach to the Patient Journey

Jeff McCormack

Iryss is building a platform to automate how patients plan, save, and pay for healthcare, by guiding them to cost-saving opportunities and tailoring payment strategies to ensure financial security. Leveraging his professional and personal...

Prompting Positivity

Chris Cooley

Chris will discuss an innovative approach at the intersection of AI technology and creative storytelling. He will highlight a unique initiative to craft comic books inspired by real people and their life experiences. The talk will showcase...

AI in Cancer Care: Enhancing Precision Medicine

Abbas Rizvi

Join Abbas in exploring AI's transformative impact on precision medicine in oncology. Discover how integrating AI with real-world data is revolutionizing cancer care. This talk will highlight AI's role in genetic sequencing, digital...

Bridging the gap with Music and AI

L. è D

L. é D is a multi-talented vocalist, and rapper, guitar player and dancer. She dubs herself a creative entrepreneur. She was born in Bansoh, Cameroon. At the age of 6 her family moved to the United States and she was raised in PG County MD...

See the full 2023 agenda