The first day of AI Summit London opened with an undercurrent of excitement that reflected how the AI industry is continuing to grow, with conversations centering on how AI is influencing industries ranging from healthcare to automotive.
The event, which runs until 12th June today, is expected to bring together 4,500 innovators and thought leaders, according to Event Director Caroline Hicks’ address, reflecting how AI is increasingly being considered as an ubiquitous technology, with people keen to understand what it means for their different use cases.
“We designed the AI Summit London to try to showcase as much of that transformation as we possibly can,” said Hicks. “Three pivotal shifts will drive the conversations that you’ll have over the next two days: first, the future of work is being redefined, not through replacement, but through AI-enhanced human potential … Secondly, we’re witnessing the emergence of Agentic AI systems that move beyond simple automation to become true collaborators … Third, we’re seeing the critical importance of responsible AI at scale, ensuring as these systems become more powerful, they remain trustworthy, sustainable and aligned with human values.”
A keynote speech delivered by Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA from GTC Paris and live streamed at AI Summit provided key touch points about where AI is going: quantum computing, AI factories, industrial AI, and autonomous vehicles (AVs) were all mentioned as being on the agenda.
NVIDIA’s experience with AI, beginning in 2012 where it worked with developers on deep learning, has served as a message to some on the importance of betting on new and emerging tech early. In May this year it announced hitting a total revenue of $44.1 billion for Q1; 12% compared with the previous quarter and 69% from a year ago.
This message was echoed in an anecdote shared by Huang, following the release of their DGX Spark – an AI supercomputer – where an underwhelming response characterised by no sales was followed by a request from a startup based in San Francisco asking to have one. Huang said he was so excited he got into his car and drove to San Francisco to personally deliver it.
“And the name of that company is Open AI,” said Huang. “Maybe the lesson is this: if a developer reaches out to you and asks if you have a GPU? The answer is yes.”
AI in healthcare and automotive
Other talks held at the event covered the adoption of AI into the automotive industry, more specifically from the perspective of how it is being deployed in motorsports and racing. Andrew Kemp, Head of Product Marketing at HP spoke to Brian Kurn, Engine Simulation Analyst at HMS Racing about how AI is being adopted as a tool to help engineers with calculating aspects such as fuel distribution and weather conditions ahead of racing, which are key parameters to understand how a car will perform on track.
HMS Racing, who have collaborated with HP spanning over a decade, use its equipment – workstations and laptops – including its HP Z Boost, which enables remote GPU sharing between devices and workstations. During the conversation between Kemp and Kurn, Kurn mentioned the various ways they have adopted this solution to streamline their processes.
At a talk looking at AI in science moderated by Lara Lewington from the BBC, Patty O’Callaghan, Technical Director at Charles River Laboratories, Mark Barber, AI Product Lead Director at AstraZeneca and Subrata Bose, Vice President, Diagnostic Imaging, Data & Artificial intelligence, Head General Clinical Imaging Services at Bayer were all invited to share their thoughts on whether they thought AI could play a key role in activities such as drug discovery and disease diagnosis.
The consensus was that AI could be used as a tool to support the expertise and know-how of scientists and doctors, but not as a replacement. The attitude of doctors towards AI was defined as wary, and reluctant. In sharing how AstraZeneca were trialling using AI in radiology, Barber mentioned that they realised they had to bring a radiologist into the loop.
“It wasn’t enough to present updates to them once a month,” Barber said. “We’re working with them because … we needed to talk to them every week, and that really helped with the adoption.
“We’ve got some radiologists that are very enthusiastic about the AI tech that we’ve developed. Hopefully they can be standard bearers for AI in the healthcare sector.”
AI Summit London continues until today at the Tobacco Dock.
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