An overview of the AI landscape including research trends, applications, regulatory insights and Canada’s competitive edge.

It's tough to keep up. As the pace of AI innovation accelerates, opportunities for industrial applications proliferate while implications for how societies harness this technology deepen. Shivon Zilis of OpenAI in conversation with Tim Hwang of the Ethic and Governance of AI Fund, offers a candid and up-to-the-minute examination of the AI landscape today. This wide-ranging discussion will touch on research trends, applications, regulatory insights and a closer look at Canada’s competitive edge.

How AI has revolutionized speech recognition.

AI has revolutionized the way we power speech recognition, which has enabled us to interact with technology in more intuitive and accessible ways. Francoise Beaufays has been at the center of this transformation leading Google's speech recognition team. Her talk will take us through the evolution of speech recognition at Google and some of the challenges the team overcame to build a tool that now supports over 110 languages and variants. 

Demis Hassabis, founder and CEO of DeepMind, will discuss the ways in which AI breakthroughs, such as AlphaGo, are helping us explore the edge of our knowledge, and the exciting implications of applying AI technologies to advancing science and everyday products.

How Canada’s AI strategy is a model for global innovation. 

AI is a practical tool that can be used by any sector of the economy. Just in the way computers and the Internet have been harnessed as powerful tools, AI is driving productivity across multiple industries from energy and agriculture to manufacturing and music. In this spotlight series, we’ll hear how AI is reshaping the business landscape in new and unexpected ways across retail, manufacturing and more.

From healthcare to immigration, spotlight talks on how AI is making Canada and the world a better place. This session will feature a series of talk from socially-minded innovators who are using AI to make a positive social impact, in areas as diverse as helping expand access to legal services to creating new tools for public health.

Meet the Experts will feature a series of talks from AI experts who will share insights on how to tackle tough problems. 

 Two of Canada’s leading tech companies, Wattpad and Shopify, will discuss their journeys to integrate AI systems into their businesses. David Lennie and Wendy Foster will share what’s working well, the challenges they have faced, and provide guidance to other Canadian companies looking to put AI to best use.  

How AI could shape the city of the future.

Artificial intelligence is getting more capable, and the hardware required for AI is getting cheaper, faster, smaller and energy efficient. These trends enable cities to use AI to help support data-driven tools that make urban life more sustainable, safe, affordable, and efficient. Sidewalk Labs is reimagining how cities can be built to take advantage of this technology to benefit the people who live, work and play there. 

As companies increasingly look to integrate AI, Canada needs a robust pipeline of both talented engineers and tech-savvy business leaders who understand this technology and how to harness its vast potential. The panel will discuss how Canadian companies should approach their talent pipeline in order to build an AI-ready team. 

Panel discussion on the ethics of AI development and how to better ensure its benefits are applied responsibly.

Like previous waves of technological innovation, AI presents tremendous potential for progress while also raising social and ethical questions. This panel of thought leaders will dive into the ethics of AI, noting the work that’s being done to counter bias and ensure the benefits of AI are widely felt.

Rubber hits the road in one on one conversations about your company with AI experts such as Amir Moravej and Francoise Beaufays.

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Find out what happens when you feed a neural network thousands of romance novels.

Ever wonder what happens when you feed a recurrent neural network millions of romance novel passages and then ask that network to tell you little stories based on images? It’s AI that makes you blush. ML researcher Jamie Kiros presents her findings on building a creative neural network and shares a few examples of AI’s take on romance writing. 

A fireside chat about Sidewalk Toronto 

Sidewalk Toronto is a joint effort by Waterfront Toronto and Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs to create a new kind of mixed-use, complete community on Toronto’s Eastern Waterfront. Come hear how Sidewalk Toronto will combine forward thinking urban design and new digital technology to create people-centered neighbourhoods that achieve precedent-setting levels of sustainability, affordability, mobility and economic opportunity. 

A look at where AI is going, from the great mind who brought AI to where it is today.

Artificial intelligence is not a solved problem. AI pioneer, Geoffrey Hinton in conversation with senior technology correspondent for the New York Times, Cade Metz, discusses his lifelong pursuit of understanding how the brain works and how it shaped his groundbreaking work on neural networks. Hinton will share his frank assessment of AI research today and offer a few hints on where AI's next breakthrough may come from. 

A YouTube pioneer, Taryn Southern's forthcoming album “I AM AI,” is the first album to be composed and produced in collaboration with artificial intelligence. Now working at the intersection of science and storytelling, Taryn is using neural networks to create new models of creative efficiency and expression. In this session, Taryn shares why she chose AI as a collaboration partner, how it’s impacted her creative process, and performs her debut AI-composed single “Break Free.”