Aggie Branczyk wants you to think about the brain like any other muscle—the less you use it, the weaker it becomes. Branczyk would know. She’s a trained physicist who built a career as a researcher and educator at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics before joining the Quantum Computing division at IBM. After over a decade of researching and teaching, she pivoted to launch Quantum Salon, a strategy and communication studio working with the quantum tech ecosystem here in Waterloo Region.
While her career has been diverse, there’s always been one constant theme that’s in the background—the difference between the process of doing work and the output of that work.
“In academia, you're much more driven by the experience of doing the work and your own curiosity than by deliverables. It’s not that you don’t care about the outcome, but how you got that outcome matters a lot as well. Maybe more. But when you go work for a company, they care very much about the outcome and less about your experience of the creative process,” she said.
How does AI change the way we think about problems?
The theme came back top of mind while Branczyk was visiting family in Australia earlier this year. Branczyk is a serial builder and the time away from work gave her space to reflect on what excited her about the work she was doing and what problem she could tackle next.
Those reflections kept leading back to one question: what is AI doing to us as we use it? Branczyk was experimenting with AI for everything from automating workflows to vibe coding websites to seeing if it could help with parts of her writing process. But while the output could be great, she noticed that she was thinking less.
“There were situations where the output of what I was creating was really good—much better than I could do myself—but the process of creating it was not as rewarding as if I'd taken the time, for three weeks, to sit with the thing and wrestle with it,” Branczyk said. “AI is great at helping us do all the stuff we couldn't do before, but what is it doing to our brains? What is it doing to us as human beings?”
Use it or lose it
At the Perimeter Institute, Branczyk’s teaching work focused on developing problem sets that students would use to help internalize what they were learning in lectures. Those exercises were designed to get them to experience the work themselves, and Branczyk started to think about whether that same process could be used to sharpen our minds as we push more tasks to AI.
“People aren't getting to use their brains in their work as much if they're using AI a lot. This is analogous to what happened with our bodies when people stopped doing physical labor and just sat in offices. They needed some way of incorporating physical work into their lives, so they started going to the gym,” she said.
But what would a gym for the mind look like? Branczyk took the idea back to first principles—people in a room doing pen and paper exercises with no access to phones or AI. She named it Mind Club, built out the event on Luma (one of our favourite event platforms), posted it online, and waited to see how people would respond.
Branczyk didn’t have to wait long.
“People started signing up! I thought it was nuts that people were signing up to do homework. But I went with it. The first event was good. Then I ran it again and a lot more people came. It was more exciting,” she said.
Deploy. Review. Iterate. Deploy again.
The first Mind Club event was held at Builders Club in Downtown Kitchener. That event focused on math problems, building on what Branczyk had done at Perimeter. For the second event, Branczyk included more creative problems—and that’s when she saw the first spark of something building.
“There were more discussions. It was more social. More fun. I started to realize the main reason they're coming to these events has less to do with wanting to sit and do problem sets and more about finding people who have similar concerns and worries,” she said.
As the weather in Waterloo started to warm up, Branczyk is continuing to host at Builders Club and has also created outdoor events to get people thinking and moving. Touch Grass invites people out to Victoria Park for a walking conversation along the trails. Graze is a family-friendly picnic to be held in Waterloo Park.
“The last one had over 30 people sign up, but it rained, so only 12 or so people showed up. I still thought it was strange. Why are people signing up? It seems like people want to hang out in low-pressure environments with like-minded people,” she said.
The newest addition to the Mind Club class list is Get Sketchy. Attendees get a Moleskine notebook, pencil crayons, and set of prompts to go around the park and discover something new to sketch.
“Everybody gets a pack, picks the prompts they like—draw a map of the park from memory, draw a flower—and there's a no-phones rule. You can do these activities in the park by yourself or with friends. It’s just to get there and explore,” Branczyk said.
She hasn’t given up on the problem sets either. She recently held a quantum-themed problem-based-learning session at Vector Space in Uptown Waterloo which she said had the most engagement out of all of the events so far.
“People were very excited to discuss the concepts once they learnt some tools to grapple with them,” she said.
Mind Club began with a simple premise: If AI is changing how we use our brains, how can we combat that without rejecting AI? Three months later, it has grown into a place where people come together to connect, exercise their minds, and rethink how AI is changing the world and our relationships.
“I didn't start this as a community thing, it was more about the homework. But it has evolved into this community,” she said. “I recently found out that a group that met at one of the first Touch Grass walks became friends and are now hanging out outside of Mind Club. It's really heartwarming!”
You can learn more about Mind Club events at mindclub.ca.
