AM CLUB —Meets at 7:30 am on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month on Zoom or in person at Northwest Arena
FALCONER — Meets on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month at 7 AM at the Falconer Fire Department Exempt Hall located at 1 Coleson Drive Falconer NY, 14733.
WESTFIELD / MAYVILLE — Currently meeting on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at 5pm via ZOOM. Contact Janese Berkhouse at 716-397-8801 for Zoom details.
FREDONIA/DUNKIRK —
Meet Thursdays at 12:00 PM - Zoom Teleconference Meetings - Effective until further notice - Fredonia, NY 14063
Committee meetings or social events can also be used as make-ups.
Rotarily Yours - October 7, 2024
President Elect Michelle Jones filled in for President Marion Beckerink and opened the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by the Star-Spangled Banner. Cáitlín O'Reilly gave this week’s invocation.
Michelle also acknowledged the visiting Rotarian, Wally Wollenzien (from Utah – soon to be new transfer member), and reminded members that the Vision committee meeting has been rescheduled and will now take place on Wednesday, Oct. 23 at noon and will meet via Zoom. The RCJCSF board will also meet on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at noon.
For announcements, Joni Blackman, Foundation Chair, reminded members about the Polio Step Challenge. Starting Oct. 24 through January 21, 2025, any member who wants to participate can pledge to donate $1 to polio plus and the Rotary Club of Jamestown for every day that you walk 10 minutes or more. At the end of those 90 days, you will donate a 50/50 split of the total amount you raise. Members should talk with Marion or Joni for the forms and for more information.
Environmental Committee Chair George Harper reported that seven members went out on Sunday morning topick up trash on the Southern Tier Expressway, between the Jamestown and Falconer exits. He said the effort went quickly and smoothly, and encouraged all members to consider participating during the next highway pick up, scheduled for the Spring 2025.
George also recently returned from a visit to the West Coast, including a visit to Portland, Oregon. There, he met with the East Portland chapter of Rotary, where they were eager to learn about Jamestown NY and also shared details about the effort there to fight human trafficking. The Portland group also exchanged banners with George, who explained they include a rose on their banner because they meet in the Rose District of the city.
Prior to this month's birthday announcements, Michelle invited all club members to attend a special, birthday celebration at the Robert H. Jackson Center on Wednesday, Oct. 9, for Russ Diethrick, who will be turning 90! The event will begin at 4 p.m. and all are welcome. Following the announcement, Joni announced the birthdays for October, which include the following members: Stacey Rasmussen - Oct. 2, Russ Diethrick - Oct. 9, Phil Cala - Oct. 29, and Diana Meckly - Oct. 30. Following the birthday announcements, everyone joined in to sing "Happy Birthday" to Russ.
The 50/50 of $47 was won by Max Eimiller, but he said the tickets actually belonged to Sally Martinez.
Sergeant at Arms Doug Conroe fined Sharon Hamilton for the recent announcement that Jamestown Business College would be donating its property to both the St. Susan's Center and UCAN city mission. He also fined Dan Heitzenrater, president of CHQ Chamber, for recently being in the news for both the Made in Falconer event and the upcoming CHQ Chamber Awards Banquet. And he requested that anyone who was an alumni of a winning college football team pay a fine, and everyone pay a fine to honor Russ's 90th birthday.
For Happy Bucks, Lori Brockelbank paid for safe travels she experienced while going to South Carolina during the recent hurricane. She also paid for her son receiving a class ring from The Citadel, and for recently being baptized in the ocean. Jim Smith paid a happy buck for seeing Bill Larson, who joined Jamestown Rotary in 1955 and also recently celebrated his 98th birthday. Dan Heitzenrater also paid a happy buck for successful Made in Falconer event this past weekend, along with the upcoming Chamber Awards. Courtney Curatolo paid a happy buck and urged members to pray for her friends and family in Naples and Fort Myers, along with all others, who may be in the path of the next hurricane expected to make landfall later this week. And Stacey Hannon shared her story about her personal battle with Alzheimer's for the past two years, and paid a happy buck for being asked to serve as the guest speaker during the recent Walk to End Alzheimer's in Dunkirk. Kristin Mellville also paid a happy buck in support of Stacey.
Our guest speakers were Jonathan Blair, Instructor, Information Technology and Professor Dale Yerpe at Jamestown Community College, who both discussed the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The two were introduced by Dan Heitzenrater, who explained that earlier this year the Jamestown Community College board of trustees and faculty had a meeting focusing on AI, especially as it related to academics. Yerpe is a profession of English at JCC, primarily at the Olean Campus. He also considers himself a student of AI. Blair is a computer science professor at JCC. He grew up in Silicon Valley and wrote his first computer program at the age of 3. He also worked on AI simulations since the 1990s and also over 50 video games that incorporate AI.
Blair noted that recently, many people have voiced concern and fear over AI, but in fact, we've been living with it for the last decade. Examples include interacting with a television remote or smart phone, which both use AI. It is also present in robotics and manufacturing. He said the AI that we "fear" is a different animal because it seems to be generating things on its own - although it's not really doing that. Instead, it relies on a pretrained transformer, that feeds a computer a bunch of data and then directs it to use statistics to predict to perform a function, such as writing a sentence or code. So in reality, the AI that exists is only as good as the data that it is trained on. It can, currently, solve problems that haven't previously been solved. Blair said that so long as a person is creative and able to solve a problem that no one else has solved before, AI would have a very difficult time replacing them. That said, it will eventually replace a lot of people because it will be able to do things that are repetitive and precision-based, because computers - by design - are good at doing those types of things. But, he added that computers can't generate their own information to create and do things, meaning they won't be able to behave unpredictably or independently, any time soon. He also said that running AI on a large scale requires a lot of energy, meaning not every nation will be able to fully utilize AI, especially as it evolves. He said AI will be the new "arm race" between nations, and only those with the infrastructure capable of generating a large volume of energy will be able to participate.
Yerpe - who appeared via Zoom - shared details about how he teaches students and others how to use AI, explaining part of his job is to get his students into a conversation with AI, because anyone who is "out in the world or looking for jobs needs to have that experience and know what it's like." He said AI programs are valuable to get into a discussion with because they will, like any partner or editor, give feedback and raise issues, at a low level at first. But the more you interact with and prompt the AI to do things a particular way, the more its behavior will change to do it that way. As a result, AI can be a useful tool to assist with writing, graphic design, running an ad campaign, and more. He said AI hasn't changed our lives just yet, but when it does, it will do so in unpredictable ways. That's why it's important we start to use it sooner, rather than later, so we all can understand and be prepared for how it advances in the coming years. He said jobs that are repetitive, including sports reporting and obituary writing, are all being done by AI now. That means those jobs we consider "entry level positions" are all being kicked up a step due to AI. But as long as a job requires being creative, it won't be replaced by AI.
The guests also took time fielding several questions from members in the audience. Following the presentation and Q&A sessions, the meeting was adjourned.
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