Overview
Futureproof Festival of AI 2026 is an international AI culture and ideas festival in Vancouver, focusing on how AI can make life more human. The three-day event includes research, creative practice, and candid conversations, aiming to help professionals make consequential choices about AI.
Schedule
Registration opens
Badge pickup from noon. The building is open all afternoon, the exhibitor tables are up, and the building fills on its own before anything starts.
Doors open · opening party
The party starts at five. Ninety minutes to arrive, get a drink and find your people before anyone says a word from the stage.
Welcome to the territory
Anthony Joseph of the Squamish Nation opens the festival with a welcome to Squamish territory. The first thing said from this stage, before any of the rest of it.
Calm Technology in the Age of Loud Machines
Amber wrote the book on calm technology, and the first talk of the festival is hers: what AI should feel like when it is built for people instead of markets, and what it costs us when it is not. Then ten minutes of questions from the audience.
AI Builders Fellowship: what they made
Two builders from the AI Builders Fellowship, Internet Archive Canada's program with BC + AI, each get ten minutes to show what they built after six weeks inside a hundred thousand Canadian government publications. Then the man who built the Archive takes the stage.
What a Library Owes the People Who Aren't Born Yet
Brewster built the Internet Archive. Public memory, the open web, libraries, and what a civic AI owes the people who have not been born yet. Then fifteen minutes of questions from the audience.
Closing Party
Philippe Pasquier + Kris Krüg + Charles Bicari
Before the closing keynote
Open session link ↗Copy session link
Registration opens · lobby and exhibits
Badge pickup from noon. The building is open all afternoon, the exhibitor tables are up, and the building fills on its own before anything starts.
Doors open · opening party · bar
The party starts at five. Ninety minutes to arrive, get a drink and find your people before anyone says a word from the stage.
Welcome to the territory
Anthony Joseph
Calm Technology in the Age of Loud Machines
Amber Case
AI Builders Fellowship: what they made
Two builders from the AI Builders Fellowship, Internet Archive Canada's program with BC + AI, each get ten minutes to show what they built after six weeks inside a hundred thousand Canadian government publications. Then the man who built the Archive takes the stage.
What a Library Owes the People Who Aren't Born Yet
Brewster Kahle
Between the keynote and the live set
Open session link ↗Copy session link
Opening-Night Creative AI Live Set
Philippe Pasquier
Open social · bar
The bar, and the conversations that started during the talks. Lights out at half past ten, and the telescopes outside until midnight.
Observatory drop-in · telescopes with an astronomer
The building closes at half past ten and the observatory outside stays open until midnight, with an astronomer at the telescopes if the sky is clear.
Breakfast · registration
Breakfast and coffee in the building, with the registration desk open for anyone landing on day one.
Where we are, and what today is asking
Kris Krüg
Consciousness, Agency, and Building It Anyway
Loki Jorgenson
Learning to live with them
Dr. Angelica Lim
Questions with the speakers
Shane Gibson + Kerris Hougardy + Raj Parmar
The Art of Asking Questions: Futureproof Edition
Shane Gibson
Keeping your judgment
Kerris Hougardy + Raj Parmar
Morning break · coffee · conversation
Coffee, time with the exhibitor tables, and the first real conversation of the day.
Who Gets to Tell the Story
Jos Duncan-Asé
Will Wikimedia Survive the Age of AI
Lane Becker
The Model is the Medium: The Future of Collaborative Intelligence
Toshi Anders Hoo
Lunch · demo tables in the lounge
Lunch in the building, with demo tables open in the lounge.
The afternoon reset
Suzy Easton
Where the Hype Runs Out in Drug Discovery
Simon Haworth
Where care happens
Dean Shev
Who Owns the Infrastructure Underneath All This
Sev Geraskin
Safety Questions. Science Answers.
Kristen Delphos
Afternoon break · coffee
Coffee before the last of the day.
Twenty Years of Remix, and Who Shapes the Algorithm
Brett Gaylor
Where Our Ideas About Machine Intelligence Came From
Stephanie Dick
What the country decides
Taleeb Noormohamed + Kris Krüg
Breakfast
Breakfast and coffee in the building from 8:30. Day two begins at 9:20.
Thursday was where we are. Today is what we build.
Kris Krüg
A FanTrust Conversation with Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein + Catherine Warren
AI, creativity and cultural policy
Ana Serrano + Prem Gill
Life-Centred AI and Who Owns What We Build
Sara Blenkhorn
Resilience at the scale of the whole planet
Andrew Zolli
Lunch
Lunch in the building.
Community is Humanity’s Operating System
Zaro
Working With AI Without Handing Over Your Judgment
Alexandra Samuel
Between the keynote and the live set
Opening-Night Creative AI Live Set
Artists with AI as their instrument: generative visuals, live-coded sound, and a crowd that gets louder as it goes. Twenty minutes, then the set hands the night to the party.
Open social
Observatory drop-in · telescopes with an astronomer
The building closes at half past ten and the observatory outside stays open until midnight, with an astronomer at the telescopes if the sky is clear.
Breakfast · registration
Where we are, and what today is asking
Consciousness, Agency, and Building It Anyway
Loki on what might actually be going on inside these things.
Learning to live with them
What it's actually like to live with these systems, from a researcher who ran that experiment on herself.
Questions with the speakers
The Art of Asking Questions: Futureproof Edition
Shane on asking better questions than the machine.
Keeping your judgment
Kerris and Raj on the judgment AI keeps talking you out of, from inside two companies rolling it out.
Questions with the speakers
Morning break · coffee · conversation
Who Gets to Tell the Story
Will Wikimedia Survive the Age of AI
Questions with the speakers
The Model is the Medium: The Future of Collaborative Intelligence
Lunch · demo tables in the lounge
The afternoon reset
Where the Hype Runs Out in Drug Discovery
Where care happens
Questions with the speakers
Who Owns the Infrastructure Underneath All This
Safety Questions. Science Answers.
Questions with the speakers
Afternoon break · coffee
Twenty Years of Remix, and Who Shapes the Algorithm
Where Our Ideas About Machine Intelligence Came From
Questions with the speakers
What the country decides
Breakfast
Thursday was where we are. Today is what we build.
A FanTrust Conversation with Naomi Klein
AI, creativity and cultural policy
Questions with the speakers
Morning break · coffee · conversation
Life-Centred AI and Who Owns What We Build
Resilience at the scale of the whole planet
Questions with the speakers
Lunch
Community is Humanity’s Operating System
Registration opens
Badge pickup from noon. The building is open all afternoon, the exhibitor tables are up, and the building fills on its own before anything starts.