// mlt & AI Communities

Learn, build, and ship AI together.

MLT is a global AI community and former award-winning nonprofit founded in Tokyo. Rooted in open education, open source, and open science, we bring together engineers, researchers, and domain experts from around the world to collaborate, share knowledge, and advance the field of AI.

Research Engineering Applications
MLT hands-on VR lab
MLT workshop session
Deep learning talk at MLT, Tokyo
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The community

0+
members across research, engineering, and applied AI, from Tokyo to every continent.

Since 2017, Machine Learning Tokyo has grown from a local study group into one of the world's most active technical AI communities. We organize talks, workshops, hackathons, and paper reading sessions, both online and in person.

Whether you're building your first LLM application, contributing to open-source AI, or publishing research at NeurIPS, there's a place for you here. Our events have welcomed more than 30,000 participants from around the world, while our GitHub organization develops open-source tools, educational curricula, and research. Everyone is welcome to learn, contribute, and lead.

01

What we stand for

A. OPEN EDUCATION

Learn by doing

Free workshops, study sessions, and curated lecture series from Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, and beyond, translated, annotated, and run live with the community.

  • Dive into Deep Learning study groups
  • MLT __init__ paper reading sessions
  • Math for ML workshops
B. OPEN SOURCE

Build in public

Volunteer teams ship real projects on our GitHub org, from ML Search to Edge AI labs, annotation tools, and AI-for-social-good applications.

  • 50+ public repositories
  • Community-led from idea to product
  • Apache 2.0 & MIT licensed
C. OPEN SCIENCE

Research together

Community-led research, annotated paper collections, and collaborative experiments, bridging academia and industry without gatekeeping.

  • Published research at top conference workshops
  • Cross-border collaboration since 2017
  • Former Nonprofit 一般社団法人 · award-winning
SINCE
2017 · Tokyo, Japan
EVENTS
350+ talks, workshops & hackathons
PARTICIPANTS
30,000+ from all over the world
TOPICS
LLMs, Agents, Generative AI, Evaluation
FORMAT
Hybrid, global & remote-friendly
STATUS
Nonprofit · open to all
02

Timeline

Nine years of community, research, and open source, from a study group in Tokyo to a global nonprofit presenting at NeurIPS, CHI, and beyond.

2017
Founded

Community started in Tokyo, Japan: study sessions, talks, and workshops for machine learning practitioners.

2018
Art Machines · Hong Kong

Presented Multimedia Art: The Synthesis of Machine-generated Poetry and Virtual Landscapes at Art Machines: International Symposium on Computational Media Art.

2019
Nonprofit · September

Registered as a nonprofit organization in Japan (一般社団法人).

Rakuten Technology & Innovation Award · November

Won the Rakuten Technology & Innovation Awards for community impact in AI education and open source.

NeurIPS · Vancouver

Presented Creative GANs for generating poems, lyrics, and metaphors at the 33rd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.

NeurIPS Workshop · ML for the Developing World

Presented Quantized deep learning models on low-power edge devices for robotic systems.

2020
Global shift

Moved from in-person to online sessions, reaching members across time zones while keeping the community connected.

2021
Edge AI Lab · August

Launched Edge AI Lab, bringing machine learning to microcontrollers and low-power edge devices.

CHI Conference · Human Factors in Computing Systems

Presented Creative immersive AI: emerging challenges and opportunities for creative applications of AI in immersive media.

ML Search

Shipped ML Search, a search engine and knowledge platform for machine learning resources.

2022
BLOOM & ROOTS

Contributions to the BLOOM large language model and the ROOTS corpus, community-led open science at scale.

2025
New York Chapter

Launched MLT & AI Communities chapter in New York, expanding the global network beyond Tokyo.

2026
Open Evals

Launched Open Evals, open evaluation tooling for the AI community.

// get involved

Join the community.

No application, no fee. Show up to an event, hop in Discord, or start contributing on GitHub. Tokyo is where our roots are, our community is everywhere.

01 · Events

Attend a session

Workshops, talks, and study sessions on Luma. Online and in Tokyo. Bring your laptop.

Join Luma →
02 · Chat

Join Discord

Where discussions happen: text, voice, project coordination, and help between events.

Join Discord →
03 · Build

Contribute on GitHub

Fork a repo, open a PR, or start a new project. All skill levels welcome.

Contribute on GitHub →