Joining the UNSW AI Society: Events, Community, and the Frontier of AI
When I started at UNSW in February 2025, one of my first decisions was to get genuinely involved in student life — not just attend lectures and go home, but build connections, contribute to something, and learn in contexts that coursework alone can't provide.
Joining the UNSW Artificial Intelligence Society as a Subcommittee Member in the Events Portfolio turned out to be one of the best early choices I made.
Why the AI Society?
Artificial intelligence isn't just a subject I study — it's a space I'm deeply curious about, particularly at its intersections with cybersecurity, financial technology, and systems design. The UNSW AI Society sits at the centre of a community of students, researchers, and industry professionals who share that curiosity.
The society runs a range of initiatives: technical workshops, speaker events featuring industry leaders and researchers, networking opportunities with companies working on AI applications, and competitions that challenge members to apply machine learning concepts to real problems.
For someone studying Computer Science with a Cyber Security focus, the overlap is significant. AI is increasingly central to both offensive and defensive security — from anomaly detection and threat intelligence to adversarial attacks on machine learning models. Being embedded in a community actively exploring these questions has already sharpened how I think about both.
The Events Portfolio: Behind the Scenes
As a Subcommittee Member in the Events Portfolio, my role is focused on the planning and execution side of what the society does. This means:
- Coordinating event logistics: Venue booking, scheduling, communication with speakers, and ensuring everything runs smoothly on the day
- Connecting members with opportunities: Making sure events are accessible, well-publicised, and genuinely valuable for attendees
- Supporting the broader committee: Working alongside other subcommittee members and the executive team to deliver events that reflect the society's mission
It's been a useful exercise in a different kind of skill set — project management, communication, and stakeholder coordination — that complements the technical focus of my degree.
What I've Taken Away So Far
The most valuable thing has been the conversations. Sitting in a room (or a call) with people who are deeply engaged with AI — whether as students working on research projects, professionals applying machine learning in industry, or founders building AI-powered products — creates a kind of osmotic learning that doesn't happen in lecture halls.
A few things I've been thinking about more since joining:
The reliability problem in AI: Highly capable models can still be unreliable in ways that matter enormously for high-stakes applications. Understanding where AI is trustworthy and where it isn't is a skill set that's going to be increasingly important.
AI and security: Adversarial machine learning, model robustness, and the use of AI in threat detection are areas I find genuinely fascinating. The intersection of my security focus and AI interest feels increasingly like where I want to direct long-term energy.
The human side of technology: Events bring out the people behind the technology. The more I talk with people building AI systems, the more I appreciate that the hard problems are often as much about people, incentives, and communication as they are about algorithms.
Getting Involved
If you're a UNSW student and you're interested in AI — regardless of your year or technical background — I'd genuinely recommend getting involved with the society. The community is welcoming, the events are substantive, and the connections you build are worth more than any single course.
And if organising those events sounds interesting, the Events Portfolio subcommittee is a great place to contribute while developing skills that extend well beyond the technical.
I'm looking forward to what the rest of the year brings — both in terms of what we build as a committee and what I continue to learn from the community around me.