The 2023 metauni festival was on the 12th of January, to celebrate metauni’s second birthday.

Each 1hr block consisted of a ~30min talk, ~15min questions and ~15min roaming discussion and general friendly nonsense / tea break.

• (Lucas Cantor): 08:00-09:00 Collaborating With Machines (video, transcript)
• (Dan Murfet): 09:00-10:00 The Case for Short AGI Timelines (video, transcript)
• (Adam Dorr): 10:00-11:00 Brighter - Optimism, Progress, and the Future of Environmentalism (video, transcript)
• (Joey Velez-Ginorio): 12:00-13:00 When do neurons represent True? (video, notes, transcript)

• (Russell Goyder): 13:00-14:00 Geometric Algebra in 2D - complex numbers without the square root of minus one (video, transcript, notes)

• GPT for NPCs: 14:00-14:30 Making virtual worlds come alive with intelligent agents

• Classes & replays at metauni: 14:30-15:00 what does higher education look like in the future?

• (Liam Carroll): 16:00-17:00 In Wildness, walking Tasmania’s Overland Track (video, transcript)
• (Ken Chan): 18:00-19:00 An invitation to Euclid’s Elements - the proof of Pythagoras’ theorem (video, transcript)
• (Isaac David Smith): 19:00-20:00 Quantum Combs, the min entropy and their uses (video, notes, transcript)
• (Matthew Farrugia-Roberts): 20:00-21:00 Considering a Career in AI Safety (video)
• (Will Troiani): 22:00-23:00 Logic and Quantum Computing (video, transcript)

Thanks to Billy Snikkers for a lot of bug fixing before the event in metauniOS, and to Tessa Snikkers for editing all of the videos.

Instructions for speakers

For a quick introduction to giving a talk at metauni, see here. All talks will be recorded, we’ll be in touch to get your permission to post them to the metauni YouTube channel (or not, it’s completely up to you).

You have two options:

1. Board talk: you’ll need a tablet that can run Roblox (or a stylus, or another way of getting similar input to a computer running Roblox, see the instructions) and you’ll give the talk by writing on boards that will be set up in the virtual world.

2. Slide talk: every slide for your talk will be put up in sequence in the world, and you’ll present by speaking and moving between them.

If you wish to give a board talk and this is your first time doing so at metauni, you should give it a trial run beforehand. Please get in touch with me (Daniel Murfet aka starsonthars) on the Discord and we can run through it together in-world at a time that suits you. If you’re giving a slide talk you must prepare your sides in 4:3 format and send them to me as PNG files labelled in the right order, no later than three days before the festival (Monday the 9th AEDT). Given the number of slides that need to be uploaded, and the possibility of back-and-forth required to deal with potential moderation, I can’t guarantee getting your slides setup if they arrive later than that.

Please be aware that you cannot include URLs, email addresses, photos of people or small text on slides in Roblox (see the Moderation section of the instructions).