Presented By O’Reilly and Intel AI
Put AI to Work
April 29-30, 2018: Training
April 30-May 2, 2018: Tutorials & Conference
New York, NY

AI Business Summit

April 30-May 2, 2018
New York, NY

AI will have enormous impact on your business.
Don’t get left behind.

Designed specifically for executives, business leaders, and strategists, the AI Business Summit provides concise, high-level executive briefings on the most promising and important developments in AI for business.

You'll get an insider’s look at the AI implementations that will have the most profound impact on your business. Advice on how to mitigate risk and out-innovate your competitors. Detailed case studies of successful AI projects.

You have critical—and urgent—decisions to make about your AI strategy. Get the insight you need at the AI Business Summit.

Featured Speakers

All AI Conference Gold and Silver passes have access to AI Business Summit Monday-Wednesday. Platinum and Bronze passes have access to AI Business Summit Tuesday-Wednesday.

Monday April 30: Tutorials (Gold & Silver passes)
Tuesday May 1: Keynotes & Sessions (Platinum, Gold, Silver & Bronze passes)
8:45am | Location: Grand Ballroom
AI Conference Keynotes
10:35am
Morning break
Wednesday May 2: Keynotes & Sessions (Platinum, Gold, Silver & Bronze passes)
8:45am | Location: Grand Ballroom
AI Conference Keynotes
10:35am
Morning break
9:00am–12:30pm Monday, April 30, 2018
Location: Beekman
Chris Butler (IPsoft)
Average rating: ****.
(4.58, 12 ratings)
Purpose, a well-defined problem, and trustworthiness are important factors to any system, especially those that employ AI. Chris Butler leads you through exercises that borrow from the principles of design thinking to help you create more impactful solutions and better team alignment. Read more.
9:00am–5:10pm Monday, April 30, 2018
Location: Sutton North/Center
Kristian Hammond (Northwestern Computer Science)
Average rating: ****.
(4.88, 17 ratings)
Even as AI technologies move into common use, many enterprise decision makers remain baffled about what the different technologies actually do and how they can be integrated into their businesses. Rather than focusing on the technologies alone, Kristian Hammond provides a practical framework for understanding your role in problem solving and decision making. Read more.
1:40pm–5:10pm Monday, April 30, 2018
Location: Beekman
Radhika Dutt (Radical Product), Geordie Kaytes (Fresh Tilled Soil), Nidhi Aggarwal (Radical Product)
Average rating: **...
(2.88, 8 ratings)
AI is a powerful tool, but often companies get more excited about their technology than in the customer value they’re creating. Radhika Dutt, Geordie Kaytes, and Nidhi Aggarwal share a framework for building customer-centered AI products. You'll learn how to craft a far-reaching vision and strategy centered around customer needs and balance that vision with the day-to-day needs of your company. Read more.
11:05am–11:45am Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Average rating: *....
(1.50, 2 ratings)
AI will fundamentally change (and power) the way the world works together. So what does the future of AI in the enterprise look like? Faizan Buzdar explains how intelligence is being applied to enterprise content in practical ways that will revolutionize the most important business processes for companies of all sizes and across all industries. Read more.
11:05am–11:45am Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
David Kiron (MIT Sloan Management Review)
Average rating: ***..
(3.50, 4 ratings)
Few organizations have mastered integrating AI technology into their business processes and offerings, and many who want to don’t fully understand the work that lies ahead. David Kiron shares surprising insights about businesses’ appetite for and approach to AI, drawn from global collaborative research conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group. Read more.
11:05am–11:45am Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Morgan
Ben Vigoda (Gamalon)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 1 rating)
Ben Vigoda offers an overview of idea learning, a new approach to deep learning that has been funded since 2013 as one of DARPA's largest investments in next-generation machine learning. Ben details the process of teaching machines with ideas instead of labeled data and demonstrates use cases with state-of-the-art performance on applications in unstructured enterprise data. Read more.
11:55am–12:35pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Andre Luckow (BMW Group)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 1 rating)
AI delivers value to many facets of the automotive value chain, including smart manufacturing, supply chain management, and customer engagement. Andre Luckow discusses how to assess AI technologies, validate use cases, and foster fast adoption and shares lessons and best practices learned from developing computer vision and natural language understanding applications. Read more.
11:55am–12:35pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
Kathryn Hume (integrate.ai)
Average rating: ***..
(3.40, 5 ratings)
Large enterprises struggle to apply deep learning and other machine learning technologies successfully because they lack the mindset, processes, or culture for an AI-first world. AI requires a radical shift. Kathryn Hume explores common failure models that hinder enterprise success and shares a framework for building an AI-first enterprise culture. Read more.
1:45pm–2:25pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Sutton South
David Barrett (Expensify )
Average rating: ***..
(3.00, 5 ratings)
Expensify is using AI to streamline and improve customer service, reducing customer wait time from 15 hours to 3 minutes. David Barrett leads a deep dive into the process of building Concierge, a hybrid machine learning-driven chatbot, covering the challenges faced, results to date, and what he sees for the future of AI and customer service. Read more.
1:45pm–2:25pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
Susan Etlinger (Altimeter Group)
Average rating: ****.
(4.00, 2 ratings)
Susan Etlinger shares use cases, emerging best practices, and design and CX principles from organizations building consumer-facing chatbots, covering the risks and opportunities of conversational interfaces, the strategic implications for customer experience, business models, brand strategy, and recent innovations. Read more.
2:35pm–3:15pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Jan Neumann (Comcast), Dominique Izbicki (Comcast)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 2 ratings)
Jan Neumann and Jeanine Heck explain how Comcast uses deep learning to build virtual assistants that allow its customers to contact the company with questions or concerns and how it uses contextual information about customers and systems in a reinforcement learning framework to identify the best actions that answer these customers' questions or resolve their concerns. Read more.
2:35pm–3:15pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
Average rating: ****.
(4.00, 1 rating)
Tolga Kurtoglu walks you through the advanced technology needed to implement cyberphysical systems, covering the right hardware to sense the right data, explainable AI, and designing security for trustworthy operations. Along the way, Tolga shares case studies and examples of advanced tech deployments. Read more.
2:35pm–3:15pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Morgan
Tags: wl
Richard Tibbetts (Tableau)
Average rating: ***..
(3.00, 2 ratings)
New technologies make Bayesian inference and generative modeling more accessible to business analysts, but this also creates new communications challenges. Richard Tibbetts shares techniques for capturing domain knowledge and making findings actionable for decision makers utilizing the explanatory powers of transparent AI. Read more.
4:00pm–4:40pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Robbie Allen (InfiniaML)
Average rating: ****.
(4.12, 8 ratings)
Drawing on his experience leading two successful AI companies that implemented machine learning and NLP solutions in over a hundred organizations, Robbie Allen details patterns and characteristics of successful machine learning implementations (and those that predict failure) and explains how to build and cultivate ML talent within your organization in an increasingly competitive job market. Read more.
4:00pm–4:40pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
James Guszcza (Deloitte Consulting)
Average rating: ****.
(4.80, 5 ratings)
AI is about more than automating tasks; it's about augmenting and extending human capabilities. James Guszcza discusses principles of human-computer collaboration, organizes them into a framework, and offers several real-life examples in which human-centered design has been crucial to the economic success of an AI project. Read more.
4:00pm–4:40pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Morgan
Tags: wl
Sumeet Vij (Booz Allen Hamilton)
Drawing on his experience bringing AI to the public sector, Sumeet Vij offers perspectives on public sector AI trends, dispelling myths around barriers to entry and sharing approaches and opportunities as he highlights examples of successful AI adoptions. Read more.
4:50pm–5:30pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Ophir Tanz (GumGum)
Advancements in computer vision are creating new opportunities across business verticals, from programs that help the visually impaired to extracting business insights from socially shared pictures, but the benefits of applied AI in computer vision are only beginning to emerge. Ophir Tanz explores the tools and image technology utilizing AI that you can apply to your business today. Read more.
4:50pm–5:30pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
Kayvaun Rowshankish (Mr), Alexis Trittipo (McKinsey & Company)
Average rating: ***..
(3.00, 3 ratings)
Kayvaun Rowshankish and Alexis Trittipo explore the extent to which firms have addressed the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (the deadline being imminent) and how they might build further sustainability into their capabilities, especially through use of AI and other innovative technologies. Read more.
4:50pm–5:30pm Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Location: Morgan
Omar Tawakol (Voicera)
Average rating: ***..
(3.50, 2 ratings)
Regardless of industry, every executive is concerned with the same thing: their customers. Omar Tawakol details the building blocks of speech technologies, including natural language processing, automatic speech recognition, and neural networks, that are necessary to implement voice-activated artificial intelligence and more importantly, enable a customer-centric enterprise. Read more.
11:05am–11:45am Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Ron Bodkin (Google)
Average rating: ****.
(4.33, 6 ratings)
Ron Bodkin explains how Google is using AI internally to enhance understanding and experiences for its digital customers and enabling external businesses, such as Spotify and Netflix, to do the same. Along the way, Ron shares examples of deep learning use cases that enable improved recommendations, help companies better understand their customers, and drive engagement in the customer lifecycle. Read more.
11:05am–11:45am Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
John Sumser (TwoColorHat)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 3 ratings)
AI and its related subtechnologies are being introduced into operational decision making throughout the enterprise. The most promising and risky experiments involve the way people are selected and utilized, but the use of AI in HR raises the specter of software product liability. John Sumser offers an overview of the available use case solutions and the accompanying ethical issues. Read more.
11:55am–12:35pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Scott Weller (SessionM)
Average rating: **...
(2.33, 3 ratings)
In video games, players learn by failing, sometimes “dying” hundreds of times before learning how to succeed. By enabling us to simulate scenarios and predict outcomes, AI has essentially made the world like a game. Scott Weller explores the role of failure in machine learning, explaining how to set realistic expectations and sharing examples of good and bad AI deployments in the wild. Read more.
11:55am–12:35pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
Jana Eggers (Nara Logics)
Average rating: ****.
(4.50, 2 ratings)
AI scores points for providing better answers to your company's challenges and for requiring you to get your data house in order. Jana Eggers explains why AI's hat trick is how it can transform your company into a learning organization. Jana reviews the benefits of a learning org and details how to build an AI program that can support you in achieving those benefits. Read more.
1:45pm–2:25pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Michael Li (The Data Incubator), Len Usvyat (Fresenius), Saar Golde (Via Transportation), Sassoon Kosian (New York Life), LORI BIEDA (Bank of Montreal)
Average rating: ****.
(4.00, 1 rating)
What are the latest initiatives and use cases around data and AI within different corporations and industries? How are data and AI reshaping different industries? What are some of the challenges of implementing AI within the enterprise setting? Michael Li moderates a panel of experts in different industries—including Lori Bieda, Saar Golde, Sassoon Kosian, and Len Usvyat—to answer these questions. Read more.
1:45pm–2:25pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
Rachel Silver (MapR Technologies)
Average rating: ***..
(3.67, 3 ratings)
With all the buzz around machine learning, it can be difficult to distinguish what is disruptive from what is merely a marginal improvement. Rachel Silver shares a new taxonomy of machine learning approaches that categorizes both models and learning algorithms with respect to technical complexity and explains how to use it to identify approaches that provide compelling competitive advantage. Read more.
2:35pm–3:15pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Ryan Kottenstette (Cape Analytics)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 2 ratings)
There are major challenges when combining cutting-edge AI with real-world, practical applications for traditional industries. Ryan Kottenstette shares lessons learned from building practical and scalable enterprise AI solutions for insurance, finance, and agriculture. Read more.
2:35pm–3:15pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
John Lewin (Microsoft)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 2 ratings)
Great AI products are more than technology; they are built on a clear (computationally tractable) model of customer success. Getting that model right can be more challenging than building the AI models themselves; and getting it wrong is very expensive. Shane Lewin outlines common pitfalls in defining AI products and explains how to organize teams to solve them. Read more.
4:00pm–4:40pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Justin Fier (Darktrace)
Average rating: ****.
(4.00, 4 ratings)
Although AI technology seems to be everywhere, implementing AI in practice is a real challenge. The technology needs to be scalable, trusted by the humans that use it, and easily accessible for those with limited AI expertise. Nicole Eagan shares the unique insights on building practical and successful AI applications Darktrace has gained from its 4,000+ deployments. Read more.
4:00pm–4:40pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
Emily Pavlini (Diffeo), Max Kleiman-Weiner (Diffeo)
Recent advances have made machines more autonomous, but much work remains for AI to collaborate with people. Emily Pavlini and Max Kleiman-Weiner share new insights inspired by the way humans accumulate knowledge and naturally work together that enable machines and people to work and learn as a team, discovering new knowledge in unstructured natural language content together. Read more.
4:50pm–5:30pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Sutton South
Paul Nemitz (European Commission)
Average rating: ****.
(4.67, 3 ratings)
The rise of AI has shown the importance of implementing the basic rules of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law into the innovation process and the programs of artificial intelligence by design and default. Paul Nemitz outlines justice-oriented AI development processes and shares a model for globally sustainable development and deployment of artificial intelligence in the future. Read more.
4:50pm–5:30pm Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Location: Regent Parlor
Ian Beaver (Verint), Cynthia Freeman (Next IT)
Average rating: ****.
(4.60, 5 ratings)
Conversation is emerging as the next great human-machine interface. Ian Beaver and Cynthia Freeman outline the challenges faced by the AI industry to relate to humans in the way they relate to each other and highlight findings from a recent study to demonstrate relational strategies used by humans in conversation and explain how virtual assistants must evolve to communicate effectively. Read more.