On the latest episode of the Sidecar Sync podcast, Mallory Mejias, AAiP and I unpacked three themes that, together, describe where AI is headed next for #associations: Speed, cost, and access: Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5 is a “small” model with performance that would’ve been frontier-level just months ago, now at a fraction of the cost and 2–5x the speed. This is what democratization looks like. Architectural innovation: We’re seeing serious progress in diffusion language models, a different way of generating text that might enable dramatic speed improvements and more efficient on-device AI. Infrastructure and energy moonshots: Google’s Project Suncatcher is exploring AI compute in space using solar-powered satellites with TPUs. It sounds like sci-fi, but it’s a serious attempt to address AI’s growing energy and infrastructure constraints. For associations, all of this points in one direction: - AI will get faster. - AI will get cheaper. - AI will become more flexible in where and how it runs. The real constraint won’t be the technology. It’ll be: -Your vision (what moonshot are you aiming for?) -Your policy and governance (how you guide your people) -Your willingness to experiment (how quickly you learn) At Sidecar, our mission is to educate 1 million people in the association community around the world on AI. This isn’t just aspirational, it’s necessary. If we embrace this moment, associations can become as powerful as the world’s largest companies, without needing their budgets, because intelligence is becoming a commodity, and AI is the leveling function. Are you thinking about your association’s moonshot yet? Listen to the entire episode - link in comments. Timestamps: 00:00 - Welcome Back from digitalNow 2025 03:57 - Speed, Efficiency & Infrastructure: Today’s AI Agenda 04:29 - Claude Haiku 4.5: Fast, Affordable, and Powerful 10:53 - Practical Applications for Associations 13:08 - AI Policy Musts: What Leaders Should Do Now 15:48 - The Risk of Unchecked Automation 21:34 – Transformers vs. Diffusion: The Architectural Battle 26:11 – Why Diffusion Models Might Be a Game-Changer 29:29 – The Future of Small Models and On-Device AI 33:31 – Google’s Project Suncatcher: AI Compute in Space 39:22 – Why Associations Need Their Own Moonshot Goals 45:04 – Closing Thoughts #associationleadership #aiforassociations #aifuture
AI Trends for Associations: Speed, Cost, Access, and Moonshots
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"What if associations became the go-to R&D hubs for niche AI solutions? Members’ collective insights could fuel hyper-targeted micromodels,licensed out to industries scrambling for smarter problem solving. That’s not just a moonshot, that’s printing revenue 🚀."