As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in everyday life, EAST2046, London’s first tech-art festival centred on East and Southeast Asian perspectives, hosted a full day dedicated to examining the role of AI and community in shaping cultural futures.
Technology as Empowerment, Not Division
Held at King’s College London’s Waterloo campus, AI Day brought together artists, technologists, researchers, and organisers to ask: How do we build with technology, rather than around it? And how do we ensure that the tools we adopt reflect the values we want to live by?
At the heart of EAST2046’s mission is a belief that technology should be empowering, not alienating. In a landscape where AI is often framed as disruptive or extractive, EAST2046 positions intelligent tools as potential instruments of agency, imagination, and collective capacity. Through public workshops and open dialogue, the festival seeks to redistribute access to emerging technologies — not just to developers or institutions, but to artists, organisers, and everyday users.
This commitment shaped the design of AI Day: not as a showcase, but as a learning space where participants could experiment, reflect, and connect.
Tools as Cultural Agents
The day began with two hands-on workshops. In the first, Yin Ying, core contributor of Way to AGI — China’s largest open-source AI community — led participants through a filmmaking exercise using tools such as Dreamina, Vidu, and Capcut. The session emphasised not just technical fluency, but the ethics and aesthetics of co-creation with machines. Participants were invited to reflect on how AI might shift authorship, imagination, and collaboration in creative industries.
In the second workshop, Dr Xiaoteng Ma from Fellou, and Ke Bao, Founder of Synonym Lab, introduced Fellou, a privacy-first agentic browser designed to automate web tasks and support creative workflows. Through playful exercises and practical demonstrations, the session highlighted how intelligent agents might reshape our relationship to information, labour, and autonomy.
Community as Infrastructure
The evening panel, “Building Communities in the Age of AI”, co-hosted by EAST2046, 706 Youth Space London, SmallWOD, and the UK-China Association for AI, shifted the focus from tools to people. Moderated byYuqian Li, the London lead for 706 Youth Space, the discussion asked what it means to build communities that are not only technically enabled, but socially resilient and ethically grounded.
Ting Wen, London lead of SmallWOD – an app connecting ‘doers’ and entrepreneurs, shared her experience cultivating a global creative network rooted in the idea that “the world is small.” Her reflections underscored that communities are not simply platforms for exchange, but spaces for value negotiation and collective meaning-making.
Across lightning talks, breakout discussions, and informal networking, participants explored questions of governance, tool selection, and cross-cultural collaboration — not as abstract ideals, but as practical challenges in the everyday work of community building.
EAST2046’s AI Day was not a showcase, but a proposition. It suggests that intelligent tools are not neutral, and that their adoption must be accompanied by critical reflection, cultural imagination, and collective agency. As AI becomes part of our social fabric, EAST2046 remains committed to creating spaces where technology is not just used, but understood, shaped, and re-imagined in dialogue with philosophy, art, and lived experience.
This is a guest article written by Lois Liao, the director of EAST2046 festival. Learn more about the festival contact the team at contact@east2046.com. If you like this article why not read: EAST2046 Festival Imagines an Asian Future on August 17th
