Infosoul Laboratories · speaking one sheet · Boston, MA · booking worldwide
The AI age, for the layman.
What is happening, what it means, how to use it, and what is worth arguing about
One talk, for people who are not engineers. A plain-language orientation to the age we are already in — how the technology works, who owns it, what it is doing to work, and the questions that come with it. From somebody who builds these systems for a living and is not selling you one from the stage.
What the room gets
- A brief history of AI — where it actually came from, the winters and the breakthroughs, and why it arrived in public all at once when it had been coming for seventy years.
- The tech, broken down — in plain speech, no maths, and what the scores actually mean.
- Using it — real cases, demonstrated live, including running a free model on your own laptop with no company in the middle.
- What it gets wrong — sycophancy, and invention: a machine that produces a convincing record is not a nuisance when the record is somebody’s life.
- Who owns it, and what it means for work — the money, the data centres, what is displacing and what is newly possible without capital.
Not a sales pitch, not a doom lecture, not a demo. The room leaves able to use one, and able to tell when it is flattering them.
The book. The AI Age, For the Layman — the talk written down, about 80 pages, paperback and ebook, coming soon. A copy for every seat can be added to any booking at cost.
Who is giving it
Phototo come
Brock Satter — Director of Infosoul Laboratories, an AI consulting and research company. He builds and deploys these systems for mission-driven organisations: on the client’s own infrastructure, with their own data, under their own control.
- Practice
- AI consulting, research and development, full-stack and custom software, data analytics, cybersecurity, AI integrations, workflow automation.
- Recent work
- A 711-record research database across 520 cities, built end to end: ingestion and reconciliation of public datasets, geocoding, an automated build pipeline, and an interactive map served to the public. Data analytics and full-stack development, at production scale.
- Since 1985
- Wrote BASIC to automate the AD&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide, then TSR’s Top Secret and Marvel Super Heroes, and in 1987 a text-based slam-dunk contest game: rules engines before the phrase existed.
- Education
- BA, Comparative Studies of Science, Technology and Culture, University of Minnesota, 1993 — an individually designed major (IDIM) across information technology, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, thirty years before the current wave. The same year the MIT Media Lab turned down his application to its science, technology and society programme.
- Profile
- linkedin.com/in/brock-satter
Formats: a ladder, booked one step at a time
- The talk
- The AI Age, For the Layman. 50 min class or lunch slot; 75 min evening edition, Superintelligence for the People. Any room. Leaves with a one-page plain-language guide. $500 community and congregations · $1,500 campus, library and professional.
- Workshop 1
- Ask It Yourself. 90 min, hands-on: the room puts its own questions to a model and learns how to check. Up to 30 with laptops, 60 in pairs. $750 / $2,000.
- Workshop 2
- Make It Yourself. 90 min, generative: everyone makes something real for the organisation, built in advance from three of its own documents, with free models from Hugging Face and the Ollama library. Up to 25. $750 / $2,000.
- Build
- Run Your Own. Half day: install an open-source model on the organisation’s own laptop and leave with it working. Up to 12. $1,200 / $3,500.
- Series
- All four in order across a month. Quoted, less for the set.
- Staff edition
- Any session for a team’s training day, with a policy conversation added. Quoted by team size.
- For
- Libraries, unions, campuses, congregations, community programmes.
What is needed
- Room
- Seminar room to hall. Tech — screen with HDMI; internet for workshops; power strips for the build.
- Access
- All ages. No technical background assumed or required. Large-print guide on request.
- Online
- Every session runs on Zoom or the host’s platform; hybrid on request. Hosts may record for their members.
- Paperwork
- Invoice on booking, W-9 on request, net 30. Purchase orders welcome.
- Cancellation
- Free to 14 days out; half the fee inside that. Weather and emergencies rescheduled at no charge.
- Lead time
- Three weeks. Funded series and conference programmes: a semester ahead.
- Cannot pay
- A room that cannot pay can host it for costs. Say what the budget carries.
Book: booking@overgroundrailroad.live · linkedin.com/in/brock-satter
Infosoul Laboratories — AI development, research and consulting