# AI, Our Community and What Happens Next

Twelve weeks of making and testing. Now what?

- Session ID: L02
- Format: Talk
- Where: North York Central Library, 5120 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON M2N 5N9
- Moderator: Ryan Kelln, Innovator in Residence, Applied AI

## When and how to register

- Saturday, December 19, 2026, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm (upcoming): https://tpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6a9b51d02dac6e0037243876

Registration is through the library. Ask the person before registering them. Availability can change, so treat the library's event page as the authority.

## About this session

We look back at the projects people built, the failures that taught us the most, and the needs we found but could not solve. Then it is your turn: in small groups, help turn what we learned into what this community does next.

## Where to read more

Four pieces, if you want to follow one of today's threads further. All of them were read for this talk, and they disagree with each other in useful ways.

**['Reverse-Engineer Anything' Is the New Wild West of AI](https://www.404media.co/reverse-engineer-anything-is-the-new-wild-west-of-ai/)** by Jason Koebler, 404 Media, October 2026. The reporting that the rest of this writing is built on. People used AI to take the ads and the tracking out of their own televisions, and to bring abandoned devices back to life. It carries the other half too, the clones and the slop arriving faster than anyone can check them. 404 Media is a small independent outlet funded by its readers, so the link may stop being free.

**[Adversarial interoperability is a team sport](https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/21/brittle-individualism/)** by Cory Doctorow, October 2026. Free. Why one person fixing their own television is a real win, and why it is not enough on its own: the large versions, app stores and printer ink, only change when the law changes.

**[Adversarial Interoperability](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability)** from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2019. The history behind the news: forty years of people making new things work with locked ones, from printer cartridges to office software. Written to be passed on, which is why it is here.

**[You can hack your TVs and gadgets with AI for free now](https://www.zdnet.com/innovation/ai-reverse-engineering-old-gadgets-smart-tvs/)** by ZDNet, October 2026. The cautious account: what these tools actually do, what they cannot do, and why most of the television work turned out to be other projects entirely. Worth reading before you try anything on a device you still need.

## What you can take home

- Web version of the talk (not yet published)
- Video of the talk (not yet published)
- Handout (PDF) (not yet published)

Web page: https://www.ryankelln.com/project/tpl_2026/l02-what-happens-next/
All sessions: https://www.ryankelln.com/project/tpl_2026/index.md