AI Ethics 101, Transmutarianism & Rawlsian Contracts: Full Panel | Vancouver AI April 2026

Three talks. Three frameworks. One room full of people who refuse to let AI be decided by 10 companies alone.

Sarah Downey opens with a 10-minute driveby of the ethical AI landscape. 10 companies control the models most of the world uses. The EU has an AI Act. The US dismantled its AI Safety Office. Canada has nothing. Her family lost $10k to a deepfake scam. Her prescription: develop an inner compass. She's building a Critical Thinking MCP server — 1,300 entries, 200 biases, 163 reasoning frameworks, Indigenous reasoning models. The line for her product? "Nobody is drawing the line for us."

Sev Geraskin follows with Transmutarianism, a moral accounting framework born from conversations on the Downtown Eastside. 51 interviews. 63% want AI to show care and compassion. Zero overlap with what the productivity surveys say. The people who need AI the most aren't in the training data.

Martin Lapotka (PhD ML, Mozilla alum) closes with peer-reviewed research applying John Rawls' veil of ignorance to AI contract negotiation. Blinded reviewer agents. 400+ simulations per contract. Stable to gender and name permutations. Three lessons for builders: manage information flows, analyze counterfactuals, don't hand over the keys.
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Drop a comment: Which framework resonates most — Sarah's inner compass, Sev's moral accounting, or Martin's Rawlsian contracts?
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