Agenda
5:30 - 8:00 p.m. | Workshop |
Moderators
Jay Boisseau, Executive Director, Austin Forum on Technology & Society Adnan Khaleel, Strategic Project Development, Vizias Luke Wilson, Chief Analytics Officer, Vizias |
Event Summary
AI is everywhere: From your smartphone to your car, favorite calendar application, rice cooker and even clothes dryer–and in the business services you use, internally and as a customer. The usage of AI in businesses and by consumers has increased dramatically in 2023, and global technology leaders plus thousands of startups are accelerating innovation and racing to deliver new capabilities first. There are now demonstrable benefits of AI in virtually every industry, advancing and optimizing business, healthcare, education, and society overall. But what exactly is AI, how does it work, and what are its risks and limitations (for now)? How can you or your business harness the power of AI? Thus, understanding AI–and the principles, pros and cons of machine learning-based AI–is increasingly important for everyone. And those who understand AI and how to harness it will be best positioned to lead in business and thrive in life in the years ahead.
This class will present a comprehensive introduction to AI, including generative AI capabilities and tools. The material will cover the basic principles of machine learning and clearly demonstrate how machine learning methods work, their incredible capabilities and potential, and their limitations and risks. It will discuss common AI applications and use cases, how these are evolving and expanding, and possible future directions in AI. The presenters will cover theory while also presenting examples and showing demos to illustrate how machine learning-based AI methods are being used in numerous areas of business and daily life, sometimes transparently. The content does not require mathematics or programming expertise–all principles will be explained at a high level as well–but the pace will be brisk and such understanding would be helpful. The class will be 2.5 hours with a break at the halfway point.
If you are considering a career switch into AI, evaluating whether AI can enhance your company or organization, or just want to understand how the AI in your life–from Siri/Hey Google/Alexa to smartphone facial recognition, from Netflix/Amazon recommendations to ChatGPT– works, and sometimes doesn’t, this class is for you. This class is open to all and is being offered for free via the Austin Forum on Technology & Society by Vizias, which provides staff to execute the Austin Forum on Technology & Society. The instructors–Luke Wilson, Adnan Khaleel, and Jay Boisseau–have over 75 years of combined experience in HPC, AI, and other areas of computing, including research, development, deployment, and education.
AI is everywhere: From your smartphone to your car, favorite calendar application, rice cooker and even clothes dryer–and in the business services you use, internally and as a customer. The usage of AI in businesses and by consumers has increased dramatically in 2023, and global technology leaders plus thousands of startups are accelerating innovation and racing to deliver new capabilities first. There are now demonstrable benefits of AI in virtually every industry, advancing and optimizing business, healthcare, education, and society overall. But what exactly is AI, how does it work, and what are its risks and limitations (for now)? How can you or your business harness the power of AI? Thus, understanding AI–and the principles, pros and cons of machine learning-based AI–is increasingly important for everyone. And those who understand AI and how to harness it will be best positioned to lead in business and thrive in life in the years ahead.
This class will present a comprehensive introduction to AI, including generative AI capabilities and tools. The material will cover the basic principles of machine learning and clearly demonstrate how machine learning methods work, their incredible capabilities and potential, and their limitations and risks. It will discuss common AI applications and use cases, how these are evolving and expanding, and possible future directions in AI. The presenters will cover theory while also presenting examples and showing demos to illustrate how machine learning-based AI methods are being used in numerous areas of business and daily life, sometimes transparently. The content does not require mathematics or programming expertise–all principles will be explained at a high level as well–but the pace will be brisk and such understanding would be helpful. The class will be 2.5 hours with a break at the halfway point.
If you are considering a career switch into AI, evaluating whether AI can enhance your company or organization, or just want to understand how the AI in your life–from Siri/Hey Google/Alexa to smartphone facial recognition, from Netflix/Amazon recommendations to ChatGPT– works, and sometimes doesn’t, this class is for you. This class is open to all and is being offered for free via the Austin Forum on Technology & Society by Vizias, which provides staff to execute the Austin Forum on Technology & Society. The instructors–Luke Wilson, Adnan Khaleel, and Jay Boisseau–have over 75 years of combined experience in HPC, AI, and other areas of computing, including research, development, deployment, and education.
Registration and Attendance Instructions
All participants must register for this event via Eventbrite. This will be an in-person event in the Captain America Room of Capital Factory.
Capital Factory, Captain America Room
701 Brazos St, Austin, TX 78701
You can find parking information here.
All participants must register for this event via Eventbrite. This will be an in-person event in the Captain America Room of Capital Factory.
Capital Factory, Captain America Room
701 Brazos St, Austin, TX 78701
You can find parking information here.
About the Moderators
Jay is the executive director and founder of The Austin Forum on Technology & Society, which he started in 2006 and is now the leading monthly technology outreach and engagement event in Austin--and starting to attract national and even international attendees online. The Austin Forum is one of the pillars of the Austin tech scene, providing connections to information, ideas, collaborations, and community overall. Through Vizias, Jay also founded the Austin Smart City Alliance (July 2015, formerly Austin CityUP Consortium) and currently serves as the Executive Director, with a vision of creating an integrated smart city fabric throughout Austin—leveraging mobile devices and IoT data collectors, as well as supercomputers and AI for predictive analytics and scenario simulation—in the years ahead to address city issues, empower city planning, and improve city life in general.
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Luke has spent the last 20 years advancing the state of the art in high performance computing and artificial intelligence through roles in academia, finance, and technology. Luke holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at San Antonio and has worked on many high-profile projects, including providing data processing support for the Nobel Prize-winning LIGO project and introducing performance and parallel scaling optimizations for early transformer neural networks, paving the way for technologies like GPT-3 and GPT-4.
Outside of work Luke enjoys science fiction and superhero movies, classical history and Egyptology, golf, and spending time with his wife and 2 children. |