Artificial intelligence feels like the new kid on the block to folks fooling around with Chat GPT and making images of people with extra fingers.
Disrupt Up AI conference
When: 8 a.m. Thursday, 8 a.m. Friday
Where: Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center
Cost: Registration is $485 via member.rbtc.tech/events/disrupt-up/register
Full schedule: rbtc.tech/disrupt-up/schedule
Its history, though, goes back to the mid-1950s. The first “chatterbot,” a psychology tool called Eliza, emerged in 1966 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. IBM’s Deep Blue played chess matches against a human champion, Garry Kasparov. The Russian grandmaster lost the first game but won the match in 1996. Kasparov lost the next year’s rematch, a tight affair.
One-note machines Eliza and Deep Blue would be amazed at what generative AI can do. This version, which scientist Geoffrey Hinton pioneered, is based on neural networks similar to human brains, with versatility to create content in multiple mediums — and make decisions about your everyday life. Nowadays, Hinton expresses fear at its potential.
The technology sparks ethical and legal issues but presents great opportunities. Much of it will be up for conversation on Thursday and Friday, during the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council’s Disrupt Up, a national conference on emerging technology, at Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center. Carilion Clinic and Roanoke are among the presenting sponsors.
The Roanoke and New River valleys are delving deeply into what AI can do, particularly at the academic and medical levels, said Frederic Bertley, from the Center of Science and Industry. The Columbus, Ohio-based Bertley said that people talk about California’s Silicon Valley and North Carolina’s Triangle Park, but technology is putting this region on the map, too.
“I mean, when I learned what you all are doing in Roanoke, from a tech development standpoint, that collision with talking about AI and getting people excited is one of my sweet spots,” said Bertley, who will deliver the opening keynote on Thursday. “So that’s why I’m here.”
Among the keynote speakers is Virginia Del. Michelle Maldonado, D-Manassas, whose House committee assignments include Communications, Technology and Innovation. Maldonado was a founding member of the General Assembly’s bipartisan Virginia Technology and Innovation Caucus.
Maldonado started her career as a technology lawyer, and her resume includes legal and business work for onetime web giant AOL. She joined the General Assembly in 2022.
“When I was at AOL in the late ’90s and 2000s, we had AI,” she said. “The difference is, back then AI was used to sort of respond and give canned answers. … But now it is predictive and generative in nature. So it actually can create, whereas in the past, it could not create. … This is not new, it’s just the version of it is new.”
She and some House colleagues worked on two pieces of tech legislation in the 2024 session. Maldonado sponsored HB 747, the Artificial Intelligence Developer Act, addressing “high-risk” AI systems. European Union law defines “high risk” as AI that could harm the health, safety or fundamental rights of people, including by negatively influencing decision-making.
The House held over the legislation for its 2025 session. Another bill Maldonado carried was HB 697. It would deal with synthetic media, aka AI-generated “deep fakes” used to commit fraud, slander and libel. Delegates passed it unanimously to the Senate, where the Courts of Justice committee voted to hold it for next session.
At an AI conference in Colorado, Maldonado said that “technology moves at the speed of light,” while “legislation moves at the speed of molasses,” according to online publication TechPolicy.Press.
The commonwealth is focused on getting the laws correct, she said in a recent phone interview
“AI and some of its related technologies, they’re evolving very quickly, and what we don’t want to do is stifle innovation,” Maldonado said. “So it’s important to figure out what are the guard rails that are flexible, breathable, but also strong enough to hold rules of the road in place.”
AI, turbocharged
Independent consultant Richard Ford rounds out the conference’s keynote speaker list. He will discuss ways to think about AI, particularly where it concerns using the technology safely.
Other presenters include Radford University President Bret Danilowicz, Jack Shanahan of the Department of Defense Joint AI Center, Amethyst Edmond and Angela Dickerson of Blacks in Technology’s Southwest Virginia Chapter, GO Virginia board member Eddie Amos and about 40 more from the medical, academic and business worlds.
Bertley, who runs the Center of Science and Industry, was an immunologist who worked on developing DNA vaccines for HIV/AIDS as a Harvard University fellow. He said in a recent phone call that he felt frustrated to see that, despite science driving so much of life, scientific illiteracy continues to grow in much of western society.
AI pro tips
Did you know that you don’t have to submit to facial recognition technology at airports? Del. Michelle Maldonado, D-Manassas, who’s also a lawyer, said that it’s optional.
“We have to be very intentional about how we share our own information,” she said. “Yes, there are places where our data is collected, based on an account we have with someone. But there are many, many places where we give our data away freely.”
Airports should have signs posted, letting people know that face-scanning is optional, but not all of them do, she said.
“You have agency in many cases to say, I opt out, and we’re trying to strengthen that across the board in more places, particularly online … at the browser level or at a website level.”
“And it’s a shame, right, because we’re all expected to read and write,” Bertley said. “I mean, if you’re illiterate, you’re embarrassed for yourself, your family’s embarrassed for you. No one expects you to be William Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, but you’re still expected to read or write.
“Same thing with counting your change. You buy something in the grocery store, no one’s going to expect to be Albert Einstein. But you still need to count. But for some reason, when it comes to science and engineering, it’s OK not to know anything about it.”
Generative AI has turbocharged the decades-old tech in a way that Bertley compared to transformative developments like the invention of the wheel and the discovery of penicillin. It’s crucial to demystify it, Bertley said. He loves the conference’s title, Disrupt Up, and said he hopes to show that disruption doesn’t have to be a negative thing.
“Science and technology move forward because somebody, some galaxy, some guy, some person, said, ‘Wait a minute, I want to challenge that and go to next,’” he said. “How do we double down and triple down on this concept of disrupting as a good thing?
“You know, a lot of the lay community, outside the folks doing this research in Roanoke, are really scared about AI. We can leverage AI. We can understand how to use AI to disrupt things but for the betterment of us. And I’ve got all kinds of examples, from health care to transportation to climate science to you name it. I’ve got a lot of examples of how we can use AI, generative AI, especially, to disrupt in a beneficial way to help all of us.”
