After ending on a high yesterday with speakers and attendees networking well into the evening, the Machine Intelligence Summit and AI in Healthcare Summit resumed today to the delight of academics, industry experts and startups.

The focus shifted from exploring the inner technical workings of AI methods and techniques to the applications of this disruptive technology in industries including; finance, energy, recruitment, retail and of course, healthcare.

The Machine Intelligence Summit started off with a bang, giving stellar startups a platform to discuss their cutting-edge innovations during the dedicated ‘Startup Session’. Under a financial umbrella, we heard from Ray Horan, who explained how Emotics are applying facial micro-expression analysis and Darko Matovski talked attendees through AI in an investment setting at causaLens.

Across in the AI in Healthcare room, a much anticipation talk from Alex Zhebrak drummed up lots of interest in his recent developments at Insilico Medicine.

“There are a lot of problems that surround data, believing that it is truly the ‘new oil’. In order to use data beneficially in healthcare, at Insilico Medicine we decided that we wanted to ensure that people understand how their personal and medical data is being used and how to control it. We do this using AI-driven blockchain solutions”.

Ankur Purwar, Principal Scientist at Procter & Gamble was certainly impressed with Alex’s work, stating that he was “under the impression that the finance industry would be the first to properly adopt blockchain technology and AI, therefore it is great to see that this was happening within the healthcare industry”. During his own presentation, Ankur offered attendees a thorough look into how Procter & Gamble have trained a deep learning model on 50,000 facial images to predict visible skin age over time. By bringing this technology to life with rapidly advancing technology, Ankur said “Procter & Gamble have been successful in realising true value in enterprise”.

YeFeng Zheng, Director of Medical AI at Tencent Youtu Lab was next up, explaining why there was such a huge market in generating medical imaging with AI. Ultimately, YeFeng believes that:

“AI is crucial to the future of healthcare, increasing the accuracy of diagnosis and counteracting the shortage of radiologists”.

Following a short break where attendees relished the chance to refuel on indulgent sweet offerings, the three aforementioned speakers participated in a roundtable discussion, tackling questions including; “Can we combine AI, precision medicine and a human touch?”. Unsurprisingly, attendees discovered similarities in their opinions but also realised that between academia and industry there are obvious gaps in each other’s knowledge. We believe that this is a true advantage of bringing together people from diverse backgrounds at all RE•WORK summits. If we are to work towards developing AI to it’s true potential and cause a wholly positive impact on enterprise and society, it is without a doubt that knowledge has to be drawn from multiple fields.

Once again, Day 2 of the Machine Intelligence Summit and the AI in Healthcare Summit was a great opportunity for networking. Our attendees said;

“During the summit I have met a lot of people and through this discovered a lot of useful suggestions which will guide the future of my work in AI and healthcare” - Yu-Fen Wang

“The talks have been extremely thought provoking!” - Doug Cheung

Also during day 2, we discovered how MI was being applied within the energy industry, specifically how it is being used to optimise wind farm performance. Vidal Fernandez, Director of Big Data at China Light and Power Holdings, went as far as saying that “energy is the most intensive industry using AI and big data!”.

Although attendees have had the opportunity to mix across tracks throughout the summit, everyone was bought together in a plenary session where a panel of experts debated “Ethics & the Use of AI”. Simon Lee, Chief Data Scientist at AXA, believes that considering ethics when developing AI is crucial but also that the right regulation needs to be in place:

“AI is not going to be stopped, regardless of what we think or do. Therefore it is important that we are prepared for it, and we need to act now. We need to be the ones taking advantage of this opportunity, rather than being ruined by it. We do not want to miss the golden opportunity of moulding the future of AI so that it is positive!”

Also on the panel, Anik Dey, representing EMOS TECH, agreed with Simon in his suggestions that there needs to be more focus on upcoming generations, who will be shaping the future of AI. He said that there is currently a “panic in universities to create courses which touch upon the ethical considerations of AI, but also tie these to public policy”. However, as ethics in AI is such a broad and contested topic, we are still left begging the questions; ask who is setting public policy? And with what information?

With plenty of food for thought (and just food!), our Machine Intelligence Summit and AI in Healthcare Summit was brought to a close. We would like to thank all speakers and attendees for joining us to discover the latest AI and Machine Intelligence methods and applications!

Will you be joining us for our next RE•WORK event in San Francisco?

View all our upcoming events here.