I’d have loved to say that the week ended on a big high but the second day was if anything a big fat meh & sadly uninspiring …
The sessions mostly doubled up as surrogate sales pitches for the panelists’ companies which got tedious as the day wore on … & the substance was shallow & thin for the catchy session titles which got people interested in going … event clickbait at best & not much more than boiler plate
There were some bright spots & a few takeaways as a saving grace & at least some interesting sessions worth making a note of here…
- EU’s ESA AI Centre will be in Oxford & it was fascinating to see how the science campus is becoming a magnet for 110 odd startups - esp in the defense AI sector
- Really enjoyed the discussion with NYC city CTO Matthew Fraser… How AI Analytics solutions are helping build crime patterns & predicting traffic patterns to alleviate congestion … exciting experiments of vehicle to vehicle comms between autonomous vehicles in the offing as well…He had some complimentary words about how London was at the forefront of city planning using AI
- Ravi Rabheru, MBA delivered a good talk on Enterprise transformation using AI and typical hurdles … ‘Bring your AI to the data and not the data to the AI’ 📝
- A concerning trend that more than 1% of private enterprise data has already moved into LLMs today and the urgent need for more auditing
- Hybrid/Multi cloud environment is where enterprises are moving to in order to scale AI -open platforms essential in future
- Loved the energy at the Startup village with a Dragon’s Den style pitching competition .. congrats to the winners !
- Meanwhile the last session’s convos on the next big AI breakthrough by the panel unanimously concluded with an uninspiring resort to AI Advisors or trawling the trends or establishing an AI CoE ..duh!
- My fav session of the day - Peter Guagenti & Eden Zoller sparring over whether AI agents are about to replace humans at a mundane task level or not . It was almost a reflection of the US vs UK mindset when it comes to even daring to refer to people as dispensable… although I do agree that a head in the sand approach by U.K. & pretending this is 10 yrs away is not great either..
The casual networking was great as always ..& we had a go at completing the LEGO wall ..our lil' contribution to this fun initiative 🧩🥰
For Synaptyx AI everyday has led to a firmer conviction of our uniquely differentiated proposition & its long term feasibility and validity in the eyes of the been-there-done-that people which was massively encouraging …💪💪
All in all a great week with the AI summit being the cool child of LTW to get the last word … A general ban on in your face non stop & tedious sales pitches on the stages will be hugely welcome next time..