ContinualAI: Democratizing AI is not only about accessibility, it is about control
ContinualAI elections are officially on!
by Vincenzo Lomonaco, Keiland Cooper, Andrea Cossu, Tyler Hayes
ContinualAI is an official non-profit research organization and the largest open community on Continual Learning for AI, founded in January 2018.
Our core mission is to fuel continual learning research by connecting researchers from across the field and offering a platform to share, discuss, and produce original research on a topic we consider fundamental for the future of AI.
However, ContinualAI is much more than that: it is a collaborative experiment to make AI research and its resulting assets more democratic. On one hand, we are trying to build an organization which produces tangible (meta-)research assets (such as Avalanche, a framework for rapid continual learning AI development, which is ContinualAI copyrighted), on the other hand, we are organized as a formal democratic association (following the Italian Law). This means that we are following the most stringent rules to enforce democratic control over everything we produce and organize.
Indeed, to “Democratize AI”, we believe that control may be more important than accessibility (faster training assets or open data, know-how, etc.). Conferences, software tools, research assets around us are often open and inclusive, but their control is often in the hands of a fixed few. Within ContinualAI you can finally make a difference: join the organization and help us make important decisions for the future of this field; your vote will count as any other vote!
ContinualAI elections are officially on!
After the first three years of the organization with the original co-founders as board members, today we are finally ready to run our first election with all the official ContinualAI members.
Are you not an official ContinualAI member yet? You can join the organization now here: Join Us! — ContinualAI
If you are an official ContinualAI member you’ll be able to participate in the elections as both a candidate and a voter. In this election we are asking potential candidates to be part of a unique “list” (a set of ContinualAI members that would like to work together as board members, plus a candidate President). This list will compete with other potential lists and ContinualAI members will be able to cast a single vote. All official members will be notified via email when the lists are available. They will also be notified via email of the voting modalities. Voting will be anonymous. A simple majority will decree the winning list and hence the new board composition for the next 2 years.
For more information, you may recall that the ContinualAI assembly and board members rights are described in the statute of the organization.
Important Dates
List application Deadline: 1–07–2022 (send an email with the name of the list and ContinualAI members composing it to vincenzo.lomonaco@continualai.org)
Election Day(s): 5–07–2022, 6–07–2022
Results posted: 11–07–2022
