Projects.

AI, pointed at problems on our doorstep.

LocAI is our applied-AI program. Instead of chasing benchmarks or rebuilding a chatbot for the hundredth time, members pick a problem someone in the local community actually has and build a small, focused tool that helps with it. Every project starts with a conversation with the people affected, and ends with something they can genuinely use.

The point isn't the model — it's the fit. A crude solution that gets used beats a clever one that sits in a repo. Members learn the whole loop: scoping, data, training, and the unglamorous part where you hand it to someone and watch them get confused.

• Scope it: talk to the people with the problem before writing a line
• Build it: a small model or tool, whatever the problem actually needs
• Ship it: hand it over, watch it get used, fix what breaks
• Write it up: the dataset, the decisions, and what didn't work

Closing the gap, one session at a time.

TechBridge is our outreach program. Members run plain-language sessions on AI and online safety for two groups that rarely get taught either properly: students, who use these tools every day without knowing how they work, and senior citizens, who are the most targeted by scams and the least likely to be shown what one looks like.

No jargon, no slide decks full of acronyms. Just what these tools actually do, where they fail, and how not to get caught out. Every session is taught by a member, prepped and run through beforehand — teaching something is still the fastest way to find out whether you understood it.

• AI literacy: what it is, how to use it well, and where it confidently gets things wrong
• Online safety: phishing, scam calls, passwords, and what a real bank message looks like
• For students: using AI as a tool without outsourcing your thinking to it
• For seniors: hands-on, at their pace, with someone sitting next to them