Summary: the Adarga AI symposium, 5 September

We are all delighted with how well received our 1^st Annual AI Symposium has been.

The impact of the event to the broad range and eminent group of senior leaders who attended was of paramount importance to us at all stages of planning. We purposefully chose to set an educational and inquisitive tone for our programme with the aim of informing senior officials, in particular serving military and defence officials, about the critical importance of AI.

From the feedback we’ve received, we feel we hit our mark.

Our excellent speakers drew on their practical and technical experiences to highlight that AI is no longer an abstract or experimental technology: it is already being put to tangible and growing application in a range of applications in the private sector and with significant success. It can no longer be ignored.

As such, it was made clear by all our speakers that we, as leaders of organisations, need to design clear strategies that enable our effective use of data and AI. However, with AI remaining a complex and technical subject, leaders have a responsibility to continue to educate themselves and their teams, to draw on expertise on where and how to use AI, and to take responsibility for implementing the infrastructure to support the successful deployment and use of AI.

Mark Stevenson, author and futurist, opened the event with a challenging talk that asked everyone in the audience to take responsibility for understanding the complex, interconnected challenges facing our world and how we might work towards leading the solutions that might address them. He took us on a whistle-stop, thought provoking journey, wonderfully illustrated through a diverse range of examples and facts. The only thing faster than the speed of his talk was the pace of technological advancement he was emphasising.

Ranju Das, who leads the AWS Amazon Rekognition & Amazon Textract technology group, and who had kindly flown all the way from Amazon HQ in Seattle, explained the latest advances in cloud technology and how they enabled AWS AI tools. He also emphasised that these AI technologies, and certain capabilities which were formerly merely futuristic aspirations, were now in the reach of all organisations.

Our panel discussion focussed on AI success stories from Arm, HSBC, TechUK and Linklaters. Masterfully chaired by Adarga’s Professor John Cunningham, the panellists discussed the challenges faced by public sector and government departments and questioned why the public sector was seemingly so slow in innovating and behind the private sector in adopting AI. Professor Cunningham coined the phrase of the day, “the proof-of-concept valley of death”, to describe how new adopters of AI might navigate their first tentative steps towards innovation.

The panel also discussed the UK’s global position in AI; with the view that the US and UK are leading on AI talent, research and development and China leading on data generation.

General Stan McChrystal gave an inspiring closing address drawing from his experience on the battlefield and in the corporate sector. He emphasised that the human and machine interface is vital to enabling effective use of AI and that the human has an important, enduring responsibility to continue to correctly interpret the outcomes derived by machines and, most importantly, to make decisions.

Whilst AI and ML can automate the labour intensive process of collecting and processing data, trust between humans, and indeed developing it between human and machine, will remain of fundamental importance in our day-to-day lives. The development of trust between individuals cannot be replaced, but as humans and especially as leaders, we need to adapt our approach to roles and understanding data.

Finally, our drinks and networking event gave everyone from this wonderfully diverse group the chance to meet and speak on the topics and themes of the day.

Such was the reception from the day that, you will be very pleased to hear, we are already planning Adarga’s 2^nd Annual AI Symposium.

If you would like to attend the 2020 event, please express your interest by signing up for our newsletter here.