Last night, 100+ curious minds, bold thinkers, and industry professionals gathered at the Obvious Ventures’ office in San Francisco for TEDAI’s second “Signals” event, a new initiative by TEDAI to bring together the local community to connect and exchange ideas leading up to their annual TEDAI conference, taking place October 21-22 in San Francisco.
The hosts of the evening—James Joaquin, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Obvious Ventures, and Sam De Brouwer, curator and producer for TEDAI—kicked off the event with opening remarks, elaborating on what they had in store for the night’s theme of "AI's Next Frontier," which included two panel discussions on AI advancements within science, biology, and robotics. Before passing the mic to the panel moderator, James left us with a quote by science fiction author William Gibson to set the stage for the upcoming conversations: “The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed.”
“True agents are fundamental to the advancement of science.” – Samuel G. Rodriques
Moderated by Rohan Ganesh, Obvious Ventures’ biotech investor, the first panel dove into the “AI Scientist - exploring the programmable frontier of biology and science,” with expert panelists including:
Aaron VanDevender, Founder & CEO, Methid
Jacob Kimmel, Co-Founder & President, NewLimit
Samuel G. Rodriques, Director & CEO, FutureHouse
Anna Marie Wagner, Co-Founder & CEO, Transfyr
Vivek Natarajan, Research Scientist, Google DeepMind
The discussion included a lively debate on where the future of robots should be headed
The second and final conversation, moderated by Kahini Shah, AI & robotics investor at Obvious Ventures, was all about “Physical AI – decoding the new age of robotics and embodied intelligence.” She was joined on stage by:
Ali Agha: Founder & CEO, FieldAI
Samir Menon: Founder & CEO, Dexterity, Inc
Jonathan Hurst: Co-Founder & Chief Robotics Officer, Agility Robotics
Pulkit Agrawal: Co-Founder of a Stealth Robotics & Associate Professor, MIT
Boris Sofman: Co-Founder & CEO, Bedrock Robotics
A big thank you to Obvious Ventures and TEDAI for hosting and planning such a great event! If you missed last night’s salon, be on the lookout for upcoming “Signals” events and be sure to apply to attend the annual conference coming up in October (or sign up to volunteer, where you’ll likely be joined by a few cred folks!).
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