CascadAI is the name the Coady Lab at the University of Victoria uses for its public AI work. We build the things that need a team for years rather than a term: a free plain-language course for people meeting AI for the first time, and tutoring infrastructure that universities can run themselves. Open by default. We are considering forming a nonprofit to run the production environments.
Applied research and public outreach run on a different clock than teaching terms and a different budget than products. A separate organisation, working closely with UVic, may be the structure that lets the production services continue. That decision is still under discussion. Today, all of this work is done by the Coady Lab at UVic.
Community research and public outreach need a paid team over years. Academic cycles are built to start and stop.
Philanthropic gifts, private donations and grants written for social outcomes could come straight to the programs they were meant for.
Fewer internal rules and lower administrative overhead, so a promising idea gets tried in a term instead of queued for a year.
Public-facing projects carry financial and legal risk. A separate legal entity would keep that where it belongs.
An independent board would mean a course or a service keeps running when the people who started it move on.
Thinking about a similar move for your own centre or lab?
We are happy to compare notes →Eleven gentle modules for older adults, families and first-timers. No math, no coding, nothing to fail — just plain language, at your own pace, with a certificate at the end.
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Gamified AI multimodal bots for interactive training. A shared virtual campus with a tutor in every room, grounded in that unit's real material, where students are assessed on what they build rather than what they submit.
How GAMBIT worksUniversities bring the classrooms and the research question. Networks bring reach. Compute providers make it affordable. The Coady Lab does the part that needs a standing team.
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Funders, institutions and networks — the next intake is open.
The public course is free to everyone, and GAMBIT is built on open-source foundations with the goal of releasing it once it is hardened. Capability that only works because we hold the keys is not the destination.
Programs are evaluated with our university partners and the findings published either way. An intervention nobody measured is a story, not a result.
Every new word explained the first time you meet it — in the public course, in our reports, and on this page.
We are looking for institutional partners for the next intake and for funders who want public AI literacy to be something Canada builds rather than imports.