Accelerating AI Innovation in Austin: A Q&A with Board President Mike Hollinger and Executive Director Jay Boisseau
What’s the story behind the Austin AI Alliance, and what drives our bold mission? How can collaboration across public and private sectors and the greater community fuel groundbreaking AI advancements?
We asked the Austin AI Alliance’s inaugural Board President Mike Hollinger, Master Inventor and Distinguished Engineer at IBM, and Executive Director and Founder Jay Boisseau, CEO and Co-founder of Vizias, to explore their vision. Get insights into their goals, the importance of cross-sector collaboration, and what’s on the horizon for AI in Austin in this Q&A.
1. What is the Austin AI Alliance? When was it officially founded?
Boisseau: The Austin AI Alliance is a consortium of companies, universities, government agencies and departments, non-profit organizations, professional associations, and individuals who represent the broad, comprehensive AI ecosystem in Austin and Central Texas. The Alliance members include researchers, developers, designers, implementers, users, teachers, policymakers, communicators, and advocates in AI. They come together to support the advancement of AI's capabilities, the positive impact of its usage, and responsible, fair, inclusive policies around development, use, and impact.
The Alliance is relatively new—we started discussions about an Austin AI Ecosystem Initiative in April 2023, through some monthly-ish meetups at Capital Factory and leveraging the huge network of the Austin Forum on Technology & Society, which has a series of AI events every April. The monthly meetups drew people from startups to global tech giants, to universities and local government agencies, to community and professional associations and interested individuals who wanted to learn more about AI. These meetups and discussions led to creating a formal, legal, non-profit consortium as the Austin AI Alliance in spring 2024. We are currently planning our first major events and creating our inaugural projects. We are excited to share these with the public via our communications platforms this September!
It is very important to note, however, that while we are creating new, collaborative events and projects, the Alliance does not govern any member organizations' efforts— it actually does quite the opposite. It exists to support and promote each member’s efforts and successes in AI, as well as to create new collaborative efforts. There is no reason any organization making, using, or in any way involved with AI and with a presence in the Austin area should not join the Alliance and benefit from membership!
2. Can you tell us a little bit more about the origin story for the Alliance? What was the initial spark?
Boisseau: I actually started the Austin AI Ecosystem Initiative for the first time in October 2019—well before the generative AI boom we're seeing now. AI was growing rapidly in the 2010s, too, due to successful capabilities in image classification, video analytics, recommendation systems, business intelligence and decision optimization, and much more. So, I started some monthly meetups, but the pandemic put the effort on ice after just three meetings. Shortly after the pandemic's worst days subsided, ChatGPT was launched, and AI was on everyone's minds. So, I updated the old meetup slides and used the Austin Forum's "AI April" activities in 2023 to launch a new set of open community discussions dedicated to creating an AI-focused, full-ecosystem community that would be open to every organization that makes, uses, trains, promotes, advocates, or guides AI. I even sought out some of the outstanding professionals and leaders I met in the pandemic-paused first try, including Mike Hollinger of IBM, who serves as the inaugural president of the Board of Directors. So, the ties really to go back to that first effort, but the rise of generative AI provided the extra spark make it happen now.
3. How did you bring leaders across sectors together? What was the formation process?
Boisseau: We are fortunate to have a large, creative, innovative, friendly, vibrant tech community in Austin, and the Austin Forum on Technology & Society brings people from all tech disciplines together every month for its programming that covers persistent and emerging technologies and how they are advancing and influencing all aspects of society. Since I lead the Austin Forum, we used that huge network of leaders and professionals across sectors that attend its events to learn about many important technologies—including AI—to bring together a subset of that community focused on AI. We then magnified that AI-focused audience in our meetups through the usual means in Austin—meetups advertised anywhere we could, leveraging not only the Austin Forum's huge community but now also the huge professional networks of the AI professionals and enthusiasts who started coming to the first meetups.
Using these networks and online communications in a region with such a collaborative, energetic culture, we were able to attract leaders and professionals in companies and organizations who all want to contribute to the advancement and positive business, research, education, and societal impacts of AI. We then explored many options for how this could most effective, and decided that a formal, legal, non-profit consortium would be most effective in creating collaborative projects. We decided to use the 501(c)(6) type of non-profit specifically because it is the most attractive for including private sector members—many chambers of commerce and professional associations are 501 (c)(6) non-profits—and started signing up member organizations. And here I have to give much credit to IBM and the Machine Learning Lab and the Good Systems Ethical AI research grand challenge at UT Austin, because once a global technology leader company and a world-class university were involved, attracting new members became easy.
4. What are the primary objectives of the Alliance?
Hollinger: Austin is unique because the community represents a cross section of technologists, creators, educators, and users in the AI space. The objectives of the Austin AI Alliance are to activate that community to accelerate the development and adoption of AI, enhance its effective usage across sectors, develop skills and expertise within the workforce, promote ethical standards and responsible AI practices, and showcase AI's social impact to educate and address public concerns.
5. Why is it important to bring diverse, cross-sector perspectives together in conversation when it comes to AI design, deployment, and use?
Hollinger: “Good design is good business.” That’s from IBM’s TJ Watson, in the 60’s. I can extend that today to “Good AI Design is good for business.” And design I can define as “the intent behind an outcome.” Bringing real users, and stakeholders in the community together make it possible to understand what it is they intend to do, what their needs are, and enable us to bring together the right technologies to address these challenges. And by keeping that diverse community that is Austin in the center of the story, we can create the best possible outcomes for that community.
6. Do you have a grand vision for the Austin AI community? What can we achieve together that we can’t apart?
Boisseau: We our mission is about advancing AI's capabilities and positive impacts, but our vision is about making Austin and the Central Texas region a leading place in the world for AI development, adoption, skills, and impact in all sectors. We absolutely want to leverage the region's unique combination of resources, organizations, technology talent, business culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, creative culture, and its social impact culture to fulfill that mission, and in doing so ensure that Austin is one of the leading AI cities in the world.
Hollinger: When I think about Austin, rallying the community is essential. It’s not just technology for technology’s sake. And there’s more to AI than chatbots. When we, from all different corners of that community define and then cultivate literacy in the technology, it helps everyone. By pulling everyone together, we’re able to amplify the best ideas, see the “yes and…” opportunities, where “if only we had ___, we could do ___” and start matching up interests, capabilities, and needs to get something cool done. Put more directly, I see Austin as being one of the places that can be the “center of mass” for AI at the state level, the national level, and international level.
7. What are you most looking forward to this year?
Boisseau: In 2024 and early 2025, I am most excited about some upcoming major events the Alliance is planning, including a 'State of Austin in AI' event and report that we expect to become annual, and also a new Arts & AI event that we feel can create positive sentiments in the creative arts communities about the role AI can—and cannot and should not—play in advancing human creativity and human artistic enjoyment. We have more big events in the early planning stages for 2025, including a comprehensive summer school with tracks for developers, execs, and users. However, I believe our collaborative projects—which may also have associated events—will be where we really demonstrate the value that a comprehensive ecosystem of AI organizations can provide in identifying new opportunities and gaps and more quickly come together to collaborate on solutions that advance AI in positive ways. I think the fruits of those efforts will become more evident in 2025.
Hollinger: I’m looking forward to the Alliance making an impact in the community by helping people be just a little more aware and by getting some project wins under our belt, and by facilitating those connections that, on the surface, aren’t immediately obvious, but pay dividends in the future.
Jay Boisseau, PhD, is the Executive Director and Founder of the Austin AI Alliance. He is the CEO and Co-founder of Vizias and Executive Director and Founder of the Austin Forum on Technology and Society. He is also the co-owner of Remedy, a downtown Austin bar.
Mike Hollinger is the Chief Architect of IBM Maximo AI Software and Solutions and Master Inventor and Distinguished Engineer for IBM Sustainability Software. He serves as the inaugural elected President of the Austin AI Alliance.