The idea to create an AI group at Manchester Statistical Society arose in the summer of 2023, along with our summer, informal MSS meetings, led online by the late John Davnall.

Subrahmaniam Krishnan-Harihara gave us a presentation on labour market impacts of Artificial Intelligence. A hot topic which engaged members to such an extent that the last session of the season suddenly became occupied.” – wrote John in his memories of those summer meetings.

Two months later, Dr Krystyna Ambroch and Subrahmaniam Krishnan-Harihara presented “POSITIVE AI, models, enabling technologies and techniques” on that September 2023 online meeting.

Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models have become hot topics in the reality around us. They should not be missing from the meetings of our intellectual Society, which is always open to innovations in many areas and to valuable applications.

In October, Callum Barker and Ernest Obu-Cann joined our group of AI enthusiastic professionals. We started to think about creating an AI Group in the MSS. Ernest wrote Formation of AI Group to Council members; Krystyna presented the proposal to create an AI Group and its goals at the Council meeting on November 22, 2023. The Council unanimously accepted our proposal, allocating modest funds, and Krystyna agreed to accept responsibility for the activities of this group. We also gained strong support from Dr Guy Marshall, responsible for MSS’s membership and communications strategy.

Referring to the MSS tradition, we adopted the formal name AI Study Group. This is an open group, any MSS member can be a member of this group simply by participating.

– Dr Krystyna Ambroch

Cover image generated by Midjourney

Sidenotes on the history of MSS Study Groups, courtesy of wikipedia:

“In 1933-34 a group for the study of statistical methods began to hold meetings, it being re-formed as a group for the study of economic statistics in 1956–57.^[38] An industrial group was also formed for engineers and others interested in statistical quality control in industrial production, this series of meetings beginning in 1943–44.^[39] The society’s ordinary meetings continued with a range of subjects: for example, its 1956-57 session saw discussions on the U.K. life assurance industry, economic aspects of fibre production, Soviet industrial expansion, British trade unions and the new gold standard.^[40]

The society formed an economic forecasting study group in 1970–71.^[41] Over time meetings of the society’s specialist, more technical groups were arranged as joint meetings with the Royal Statistical Society and the North Western branch of the Institute of Statisticians, but meetings became infrequent in the 1980s.^[42]“