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A Curator Of What’s Next.

A Cynicism Evaporator.

A World-Class Imaginarium.

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What’s up?

 

Dear PopTech Friends and Family,

Each year, PopTech invites a small number of value-aligned corporations, foundations, and agencies to support our conference, uniting a diverse expertise pool to share knowledge, inspire new ways of thinking, and generate new insights. We would like to express our gratitude to our PopTech 2024: Uncharted Territory partner organizations—a fantastic group of collaborators and guides!

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundationimagining a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right. We look forward to exploring Uncharted Territory and invie participants to share their hunches and bold ideas about how we can reorient health research to dismantle structural racism, center community, and honor many ways of knowing.

The Paul & Jackie Schaeffer Foundation – advancing ingenuity and integrity through its long-term support of the PopTech Fellows programs, its impact initiatives, and the annual PopTech conference.

The Human Rights Foundation a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, focusing on closed societies. 

Partners Global – an international NGO working to build a world where civil society thrives, change is managed peacefully, and human rights are central to global governance. We elevate organizational resilience and peacebuilding efforts through strategic and flexible partnership models.

GhostNotepartnering with movement makers and iconic brands alike to center the stories and experiences too often unheard. 

Sylvain – provoking progress through the power of strategy and design.

UnWrapIt – supporting PopTech’s commitment to sustainability through responsible gifting and the avoidance of mass-produced swag. 

Interested in partnering? Come explore with us! Contact [email protected]

Wait, you haven’t registered yet? Only a handful of registration spots remain—don’t get left behind!

 

REGISTER NOW

Find details and a full roster of provocateurs on the PopTech 2024 conference page

 

Join us live October 8-10, 2024, at The REACH at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, for a program filled with provocations, questions, debates, field trips, and more! Additional highlights and announcements are coming throughout the next few weeks.

 

Stay in touch, stay in tune,

The PopTech Team

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PopTech 2024: Uncharted Territory

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Really?

AI Copyright Conundrum: Who is the author? By Tamara Pester

Artificial intelligence (AI), by definition, refers to the simulation of human intelligence by software-coded heuristics. AI tools rely on prompts created by humans to engage algorithms that perform tasks and solve problems. Artist and entrepreneur Jason M. Allen used the Midjourney generative AI tool to create an award-winning piece, Theatre D’Opera Spatial. I represented him in an attempted registration with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2022. Registration was denied, and the refusal became final in 2023 after exhausting the Request for Reconsideration process.

 

With its profound legal implications, this matter revolves around the debate concerning the validity of original human input in AI art creation. Are machines capable of spontaneous creativity without “human authorship”? A recent court case said an AI tool can’t be an author. However, in our case, the Copyright Office has said that the human isn’t the author. So, who is?

 

Humans in the U.S. can protect their intellectual property (IP) through patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and copyrights. Copyrights protect “original works of authorship.” Copyright registration amplifies owners’ rights, particularly in infringement cases, enabling them to claim statutory damages.

 

Copyright Act Section 313.2 mandates human authorship for copyright eligibility. Works purely generated by machines fail to meet this criteria. Because Allen input 624 prompts into Midjourney to create his work, the U.S. Copyright Office argued that Midjourney, not Allen, produced the images and thus denied copyright protection, deeming insufficient human authorship.

 

Further dialogue with the Copyright Office Reconsideration process reflects the ongoing and dynamic nature of the debate in copyright adjudication involving AI. The Copyright Office seems to consider AI tools capable of simulating human intelligence and having enough creative skill to generate art. This underscores the existential question of whether AI is intelligent enough to independently create art, drawing the line between creativity vs. commands and humans vs machines.

We invite posts that capture the astonishing, engaging, and entertaining. Submit via REALLY?

Worth a Watch

Love Not War 2024, created by the Groundswell Project, led by PopTech Social Innovation Fellow Hadiya Masieh, recognizes The International Day of Peace on September 21, 2024. 

Like these talks? Visit the PopTech YouTube Channel – home to a treasure trove of timeless content.

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Reading Corner

Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s hunt for UFOs by Luis “Lue” Elizondo follows a former senior intelligence official and special agent recruited into the strange and highly sensitive US government program to investigate unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). This one is for all of the outer space and extraterrestrial buffs in the PopTech community!

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Upcoming Events

March 2

1230 — 115 PM EST

Reading Corner: The Hype Handbook.

Michael Schein will read from and discuss his recent book, The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable…

March 2

1230 — 115 PM EST

Reading Corner: The Hype Handbook.

Michael Schein will read from and discuss his recent book, The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable…

March 2

1230 — 115 PM EST

Reading Corner: The Hype Handbook.

Michael Schein will read from and discuss his recent book, The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable…