image credits: TEDAI
Are we bold enough? That is the question the hundreds of AI pioneers, builders, and leaders were asked as they came together at TEDAI in San Francisco earlier this week.
Now in its 3rd year, TEDAI is an event curated and organized by the brilliant Sam & Walter De Brouwer, in collaboration with TED. It brings together a dynamic network of global leaders across industries - including visionaries in technology, science, healthcare, media, and the arts.
United by curiosity and a drive to shape the future, this community spent time this week exploring AI's impact on the world around us via TED Talks style presentations and live demonstrations.
The agenda covered a wide range of subjects - from the mathematics of reasoning to the architectures of LLMs, and from the philosophy of AI to using AI to power creativity.
Having volunteered at this event each year since its inception, I always love feeling the buzz on-the-ground. This energy is fueled by the impressive thought leaders who take the stage - each of them a visionary leader within their domain. Some highlights included:
Day 1 - TED Talks @ Herbst Theater
Engine of Thoughts
Speakers: Llion Jones (Sakana AI), Eric Zelikman (Quiet-STaR & fmr xAI), Tudor Achim (Harmonic), Rodrigo Liang (SambaNova), Ayse Coskun (Emerald AI & Boston University), Vlad Tenev (Robinhood Markets)
Expressions of Intelligence
Speakers: cred speaker, James Joaquin (Obvious Ventures), Steven Levy (Wired), Bryan McCann (You.com), Chip Huyen (Computer Scientist), Judy Fan (Stanford University), Prem Akkaraju (Stability AI), John Thickstun (Cornell University), May Habib (Writer), Nathan Price (Thorne & Buck Institute)
Unfolding Worlds
Speakers: Kai-Fu Lee (Sinovation Ventures & 01 .AI), Janet Egan (CNAS), Philip Johnston (Starcloud), Jeremiah Owyang (Blitzscaling Ventures & Llama Lounge), Rafael Rafailov (Thinking Machines & fmr Stanford, Google Deepmind, UC Berkeley)
Day 2 - Panels & Interactive Sessions @ SHACK15 in San Francisco's Ferry Building
A few highlights from the program:
Frontiers of Multimodal AI
Speakers: Ina Fried (Axios), Jaime Lien (Archetype AI), John Hanke (Niantic Spatial Inc.), Rong Yan (HeyGen)
AI in the Enterprise: From Pilots to Production
Speakers: Prem Akkaraju (Stability AI), Robin Braun (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), Dan Priest (PwC), Paul Stathacopoulos (eBay), Shirin Ghaffary (Bloomberg News)
Funding the Next Wave: Funding AI Startups
Speakers: Krystal Hu (Reuters), Louis Lehot (Foley & Lardner LLP), Sruthi Ramaswami (ICONIQ), Lu Zhang (Fusion Fund), Camilo Acosta (Perceptive Ventures)
The AI Workforce: Skills for the Next Decade
Speakers: Fred Vogelstein (CrazyStupidTech), Anthony Abbatiello (PwC), Diya Jolly (Xero), Elena Sunshine (Oracle), Aparna Chennapragada (Microsoft)
Aligning and Governing AI in a Global Landscape
Speakers: Eva Nahari (Vectara), Rajeev Ronanki (Lyric), Natasha Allen (Foley & Lardner LLP), Jenn Kosar (PwC), Manoj Saxena (Trustwise)
AI and Life Sciences
Speakers: Joel Dudley (Bevimi), Nathan Price (Buck Institute & Thorne), Tracy Brandmeyer (BrainMind), John Cumbers (SynBioBeta)
My favorite session of the event? Way too hard to pick! I was very fascinated by the talk on building massive 5GW data centers in space - something that’s actually starting to become feasible and could in the coming decade even compete commercially with building ones here on Earth.
I also really enjoyed Jeremiah Owyang’s talk on AI and community, especially hearing how the SF Bay is leading the charge with nearly 5K AI-focused events hosted since 2023. His breakdown of the five types of AI cultures taking shape as adoption grows was also interesting, and it was fun chatting among us volunteers about how we’ve encountered many of these within our own communities - the AI Resisters, AI Followers, AI Forwards, AI Firsts, and AI Natives.
And of course, no TEDAI would be complete without robots! This year, one lucky attendee even got to take one home - which, apparently, was his daughter’s one wish for her dad’s trip, he told the audience after the random drawing was announced.
Want to engage with events like TED AI? Get in touch! And interested in keeping up to date with more events like this? Follow our newsletter!
