Local comedian, Rahmein Mostafavi, taps an iPad as if it’s a microphone (courtesy of Rahmein Mostafavi)
Comedians will again battle ChatGPT in an event at Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse on Columbia Pike tomorrow (Thursday).
Local comedian Rahmein Mostafavi will host the interactive comedy show “Comedian vs. Machine” at the theater at 2903 Columbia Pike. He will be flanked by two other comedians helping him “carry the funny” — Baltimore comic Josh Kuderna and D.C.-based comic Becca DiLuzio.
Doors will open at 6 p.m. for a 7 p.m. show start time.
This won’t be Mostafavi’s first time battling artificial intelligence. He hosted a comedy show against ChatGPT last September — an experience that he says taught him “what segments worked best and more about how the technology needed to be used to maximize timeliness and efficiency.”
Mostafavi, while preparing for the show, shared with ARLnow that he believes comedians can use AI and other technology to their advantage.
“As comedians, we observe everything happening in the world. Politics. Society. Self,” said Mostafavi, “AI is a new entity we are all experiencing for the first time. So as comics, we will add our [point-of-view] about it in our jokes because it’s part of our reality, ironically.”
Although AI can write essays, email newsletters and generate images, Mostafavi says that for him, the new technology is just a “fun alternative” that will not change his approach to comedy.
And while there is a great deal of concern about how AI might replace artists, or at least steal their work, Mostafavi says he believes AI does not stand a chance against him and his comic entourage.
“Human experience is a must for top-level comedy,” said Mostafavi. “AI can write basic jokes but it will never be human.”
Arlington Cinema Drafthouse at night (Flickr pool photo by TheBeltWalk)
Real comedians will go toe-to-toe with AI at Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse on Columbia Pike.
On Friday, the old-school theater will host an interactive comedy show called “Comedy GPT.” Audience members will be able to spar with comedians and see if AI is as funny as they are.
Rahmein Mostafavi, a local comedian and a guest host on ARLnow’s upcoming podcast, will host the event.
In addition to Mostafavi, the event will feature local comedians Jamal Russell and Winston Hodges. Mostafavi shared that there will be stand-up comedy, improv, AI-generated poetry, karaoke and sketches.
“I have a few different facets in there to see if Chat GPT can keep up, if it’s funny — you know, if the written words are funny, or if it’s just comedic watching GPT kind of fail,” Mostafavi said. “We will discover that as we go.”
At one point in the show, audience members can volunteer to perform Chat GPT’s jokes and go head-to-head with a stand-up comedian.
While Mostafavi says that AI has yet to affect comic performers, the show aims to address concerns that the technology could replace jobs in specialized industries.
“When it really comes down to it, the intricacies thus far of human nature — our responsiveness, our sensitivities, our inflections — are still very important, but this is the beginning,” Mostafavi said.
Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that highlights Arlington-based startups, founders, and local tech news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1515 Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn.
A Rosslyn-based startup says it is on a mission to help companies adopt artificial intelligence responsibly.
The company, Trustible, announced in mid-April that it emerged from “stealth” — a quiet period of growth and initial fundraising — with an “oversubscribed” $1.6 million in “pre-seed” funding, tech news outlet Technical.ly D.C. first reported.
That money will go toward hiring employees and improving its government compliance solutions. These are aimed at helping companies demonstrate they are following emerging government regulations, such as those poised for adoption by the U.S. and the European Union, per a press release.
As this technology rapidly improves, companies worldwide are racing to adopt and adapt to it. In that haste, however, Trustible founders Gerald Kierce and Andrew Gamino-Cheong worry organizations could wind up not complying with government regulations and unleashing harmful applications of AI.
“AI is becoming a foundational tool in our everyday lives — from business applications, to public services, to consumer products,” they wrote in a blog post last month. “Recent advances in AI have dramatically accelerated its adoption across society — unquestionably changing the way humans interact with technology and basic services.”
Trustible founders Gerald Kierce, left, and Andrew Gamino-Cheong (courtesy photo)
Companies ramping up their use of AI are entering uncharted waters, however. The founders say these organizations have to answer tricky questions like whether AI can be biased and who is liable AI breaks the law or produces results that are not factual. They worry about misuses such as wrongful prosecution, unequal health care and national surveillance.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” they say. “Despite good intentions, organizations deploying AI need the enterprise tools and skills to build Responsible AI practices at scale. Moreover, they don’t feel prepared to meet the requirements of emerging AI regulations.”
That is why demonstrating trust in AI will be key to it being adopted successfully, say Kierce and Gamino-Cheong.
“Many of the challenges we’ve outlined require interdisciplinary solutions — they are as much of a technical and business problem as they are socio-technical, political, and humanitarian,” per the blog post. “But there is a critical role for a technology solution to accelerate Responsible AI priorities and scale governance programs.”
That is where Trustible comes in. It provides all the minutiae companies need — checklists, documentation tools and reporting capabilities — to adopt AI as governments try and concurrently develop ways to regulate it.
The platform helps organizations define policies, implement and enforce ethical AI practices and prove they comply with regulations, in anticipation of compliance reviews and AI audits.
Trustible logo
Already, the U.S. and Europe appear poised to adopt regulations, they say.
In the U.S., the National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a framework the founders believe will inform any pending federal regulations. Meantime, the White House has released an “AI Bill of Rights” the founders say serves as a blueprint for institutions looking to develop internal AI policies.
For the past few weeks, ARLnow has been experimenting with an automated email newsletter that’s written almost entirely by AI.
The “ARLnow AM” newsletter sends at 8 a.m. each weekday morning and summarizes that day’s Morning Notes and the past day’s local news articles.
Aside from the headlines, the intro and the article summaries are all written by the GPT-4 generative AI model. Further, the email’s design was mostly coded by GPT-4 and the creation and sending of the email each morning requires no human intervention.
The idea behind the email was to give readers a morning alternative to our venerable Afternoon Update email without needing to use scarce additional staff resources.
The newsletter is admittedly not perfect. Let’s list the ways:
We’re still working to refine the design. Coding an email newsletter that’s compatible with all email clients is much harder than it sounds.
Sometimes the AI-written article blurbs miss factual nuances in stories.
The AI-written intros are, for lack of a better term, corny. They’re also a bit repetitive. We’re trying to figure out ways to improve it.
At this point, we have not included any local advertising. (According to our polling, at least, the ads from local businesses on ARLnow are seen as a generally positive feature of the site.)
So, the bottom line is that this is experimental and the blurbs should not be entirely relied upon for decision-making purposes. But, if you want a front seat to seeing how AI can be applied in local media, we’re offering a chance for readers to sign up and check it out.
Note that this is on a separate mailing list, so signing up will not affect an existing Afternoon Update or ARLnow Press Club subscription.
Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that highlights Arlington-based startups, founders, and local tech news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1515 Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn.
A local data analytics company is bringing on new leadership as it plans to find new uses for artificial intelligence.
Rosslyn-based Association Analytics (1560 Wilson Blvd) hired a new Chief Product Officer and Executive Chairman, Rob Wenger, and a new Chief Technology Officer, Conor Sibley. The two men worked with Association Analytics President and Chief Revenue Officer Mark Lowry to build Ballston-based Higher Logic.
The hiring news caps significant growth in recent years, according to Chief Marketing Officer Dave Bornmann. The small company, which has north of 50 employees, doubled in size over the last couple of years. With new leadership focused on product development and expanding uses for AI, he anticipates more growth to come.
Like Higher Logic, Association Analytics works with professional societies that individuals join, largely in healthcare, real estate and STEM, as well as trade associations that companies join, he said. The company currently brings together data that is typically scattered across platforms associations use to run events and host online communities.
“These [platforms] don’t talk to one another,” says Bornmann. “We bring that together in one platform and serve up data visualization and dashboards that give insights they didn’t previously have because they couldn’t see data together.”
It uses AI to help associations predict, for instance, who might attend an event or renew their membership. That function has been critical as in-person events — the second largest revenue source after membership for many associations — resumed after Covid lockdowns and restrictions let up.
Using Association Analytics, clients noticed a trend they did not expect, Bornmann said.
“With insights from our platform, clients realized that, during the pandemic, they got people attending virtual events and paying money and then, when the in-person events came roaring back, there were segments of their membership who — it turns out — only showed up for virtual ones,” he said. “They realized they had this unmet need that got met during the pandemic by necessity.”
Up until now, Association Analytics has limited its use of AI to predicting outcomes based on available data, leaving analysis up to professionals. As the technology underpinning AI advances, the company will be looking into ways that AI can suggest actions to take based on trends.
As part of that recommendation, AI will look at what similar associations, based on size, industry or location, are doing.
“Those are the types of things that we’re starting to work with, and Rob and Conor are bringing depth of expertise in that area,” Bornmann said. “Their expertise — not only in tech but product development — and deep understanding of association industry is exciting. They’re able to step in and almost immediately get at it.”
Rob Wenger (left) and Conor Sibley join Association Analytics (by ARLnow)
Wenger founded Higher Logic and was its CEO up until two years ago. Sibley was the CTO and seventh employee, joining before the firm experienced substantial growth, acquiring a slew of companies in recent years. Both are based in Arlington and spent the last 18 months starting a company called Cloud Generation, a credentialing platform for associations.
They connected with Association Analytics CEO Julie Sciullo over their shared enthusiasm for data and how the association industry can use this information to run more effectively, Bornmann said.
“They both had an ‘aha’ moment and realized, ‘This is perfect,'” the marketing officer said.
