2016 MIT Tech Conference: The rise of artificial intelligence

Cambridge, Mass., February 5, 2016 – What role will Artificial Intelligence play in your daily life ten years from now? In what direction do researchers and companies see it moving? Will Artificial General Intelligence someday replace business executives? And how will AI redefine ethics and rights?

On February 20, some of the world’s greatest minds grappling with these questions and more will gather at MIT’s world renowned Media Lab for the 2016 MIT Tech Conference: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence.

Slated keynote speakers are:

Ray Kurzweil – Author, inventor, futurist

Inc. magazine describes him as the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison." PBS selected him as one of the "sixteen revolutionaries who made America." In 2012, Kurzweil was appointed Director of Engineering at Google, heading up a team developing machine intelligence and natural language understanding.

Rob High - IBM Fellow, Vice President and CTO, IBM Watson

As a key member of the Watson Leadership team, High works collaboratively with the Watson engineering, research, and development teams across IBM.

Panels will include:

Your Life in 2025 Glimpse into a world where AI prevails in every aspect of your daily life. Goods reach your home before you realize you need them. Predictive automation rules in transportation, medicine, recreation, communication, and other tasks of the modern daily experience.

The New Workplace Experts say Artificial General Intelligence is not far off. With it comes the possibility of AGI performing jobs more efficiently than humans. What does this mean for the global workplace?

Redefining Ethics and Rights Who takes the blame when a self-learning, self-driven car meets with an accident? Would an AI engine have the same 'rights' as a human being? AI is set to challenge humanity with some of the most fundamental questions about privacy, liability and human rights. How do we proceed?

Slated panelists are:

• Dennis R. Mortensen – CEO and founder, X.AI
• Amanda Kahlow - CEO and founder, 6SENSE
• Bruno Kurtic – Founding VP of Product and Strategy, SUMO LOGIC
• Richard Kerby – Vice President, Venrock
• Fred Goff – CEO, Jobcase
• Thomas Kochan – Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management; author of Shaping the Future of Work
• Illah R. Nourbakhsh – Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
• John Frankel – Founding partner, FFVC
• Bill Hibbard - Scientist, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Space, Science and Engineering Center
• Nell Watson - Engineer, entrepreneur, and futurist thinker; founder of Poikos
• Pavandeep Kalra – Director of Data Science, Azure Machine Learning, Microsoft
• Ajay Singh – Venture investor, Samsung
• Francesca Rossi – Research scientist, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

A Technologies of the Future Showcase will spotlight some of the most innovative, forward-thinking technologies being developed in the AI domain.

The annual MIT Tech Conference is organized by students from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

“This conference provides an opportunity to learn about AI breakthroughs and innovative directions from the world’s most innovative companies, researchers and academics with the hope of inspiring new entrepreneurial, design and business ideas among future leaders,” says Nargis Sakhibova, a conference organizer and MIT Sloan MBA ’17.

Adds fellow organizer and MIT Sloan MBA ’16 Nicholas Baladis, “With AI technology being driven by businesses, our future leaders must learn to operate at the cusp of both technology and principled management – a discipline that MIT Sloan is optimally positioned to advance.”

For more information, please visit: www.mittechconference.com

About the MIT Sloan School of Management

The MIT Sloan School of Management is where smart, independent leaders come together to solve problems, create new organizations, and improve the world. Learn more at http://mitsloan.mit.edu/