tbd/con
2026
the future of ai is tbd.
so is everything else.
a conference for people who have more questions than answers.
AI isn't arriving cleanly. neither should the conversation about it.
Madison Karas, Patrick Boehler, Matthew Gore-Kormanik, and David Kuszmar are putting together tbd/con, a virtual conference for people who have more questions than answers about AI.
researchers are probing model behavior. security practitioners are breaking systems. journalists are trying to explain what's happening, or figure out how to survive it as competition. policymakers are being asked to act on incomplete understanding. developers are shipping anyway. the result is a fragmented conversation about a technology that doesn't respect the boundaries it crosses.
tbd/con is an attempt to look at that, be surprised and confused and inspired. no keynotes from on high. no illusion of consensus. just practitioners across disciplines comparing notes and figuring out what to ask next.
if that sounds like your kind of room, take a look at the site and let us know how you want to be involved.
what's tbd
who ai actually serves
what it does to information ecosystems
whether safety and openness can coexist
how technologists, journalists, researchers, and hackers work together
what comes next
the sessions reflect that: talks that end with open questions. workshops where you build something and fail and learn from that. office hours to consult with someone from another domain. a midway where you wander into something you didn't expect.
circles
thought
systems architecture, ethics, epistemology, and philosophy centered on the emergent realities of synthetic and synthetic-human cognition.
information
utility, influence and the infrastructure of what we know and believe.
security
adversarial AI, breaking models, the realities of responsible disclosure, and the arms race between offense and defense.
practice
the mechanics of building: architectures, data curation, and engineering at scale.
garage
wild prototypes, failed experiments, pet projects, and the weird stuff that happens on the edges and the margins.
how it works
all virtual.
all on gather.town.
talks
unsolved theories
demos
raw prototypes
workshops
collaborative failure
panels
civil disagreement
office hours
expert critique
the midway
random encounters
when
september 23-24, 2026
where
gather.town
virtual campus. accessible anywhere.
access
free
no admission cost.
got a question worth 30 minutes?
we are looking for talks that end with open questions. technical depth, social critique, and wild prototypes welcome.
review crew, call for reviewers
tbd/con is a virtual conference for people who have more questions than answers about AI. researchers, hackers, journalists, policy people, builders. people who rarely end up in the same room. we're trying to change that.
we're looking for 5 review crew members to help us shape what gets shared at the conference.
the circles
what you'd do
you'll join a small team for one of the five circles, working from criteria we share with you ahead of the review window. credit on the final program.
- review submissions during the july-august 2026 window
- join a short sync with your circle's team on june 17 to talk through selections
- optionally weigh in on lightning demos as a full panel
who we're looking for
you don't need to have all the answers. you do need:
- lived familiarity with the questions in your circle
- a commitment to perspectives that don't usually get the mic
- the ability to disagree clearly and explain why
we especially want to hear from practitioners, independent researchers, developers, community journalists, and people who've watched AI develop up close.