The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society is delighted to announce a new partnership with the AI safety and research company Anthropic. This August, Anthropic will be hosting a series of workshops to help artists, media and academics learn to use AI as a helpful day-to-day tool, freeing up time from burdensome administrative tasks so they can focus on true creative output.
AI is a hot topic and is becoming more prevalent across all industries. Anthropic believes AI will augment, not replace, human creativity; and the Anthropic team is dedicated to showing artists, media and academics how this technology can support research, planning, brainstorming, storyboarding, summarisation and more. Anthropic aim to highlight how AI can contribute to existing aspects of the creative process, and be the most helpful companion possible to creative communities.
The Anthropic team will be in Edinburgh at the beginning of this year’s Fringe to run three workshops, each tailored to a different festival audience. Members of their education and creative teams will showcase and explain how to utilise Anthropic’s flagship AI assistant Claude, a language model used by millions of people for personal and professional tasks.
In addition to learning how to use highly capable and responsible AI tools, artists, media professionals and academics will also be encouraged to provide feedback within the workshops, and to share their perspectives on how culture and the arts can benefit from the future of AI.
The workshops will be held at St Leonard’s Hall at The University of Edinburgh, a short walk from George Square. Workshops are free to attend and, given limited capacity, the Fringe Society encourage registration as soon as possible.
Each workshop will consist of a 10-minute introduction to AI, a 30 minute demonstration of helpful tasks, and 20 minutes of attendee Q&A and feedback.
Register for a place at the Anthropic workshops below:
- Media professionals workshop: Sunday 4 August, St Leonard's Hall, 11:00-12:30: An opportunity for journalists to discover how AI can help with research, citation, and administration to unblock valuable writing time.
- Artists workshop: Monday 5 August, St Leonard's Hall, 13:00-14:30: An opportunity for artists to learn about brainstorming, storyboarding, and creative operations with an AI assistant.
- Academics workshop: Monday 5 August, St Leonard's Hall, 16:00-17:30: An opportunity for the academic community to apply AI to research and development, revision, lesson planning, grading and more.
Shona McCarthy, Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: ‘We’re pleased to be working with a company that really wants to help to make AI a force for good in the creative industry. Innovation and technology evolve at pace, and we look forward to welcoming Anthropic to Edinburgh this August as they support artists and participants at the 2024 Festival Fringe.’
Everett Katigbak, Brand Creative Director at Anthropic, said: "The Edinburgh Festival Fringe represents a unique convergence of human creativity and expression. By participating in, collaborating with, and learning from the Fringe community this August, we aim to explore how AI can serve as a tool to complement human ingenuity. We hope to showcase practical applications of our technology, encourage thoughtful dialogue, and discover how AI might open new pathways for artistic and creative endeavours. We look forward to engaging in the ongoing conversation about the interplay of technology and human creativity."
