MIT professor Daniela Rus, director of the school’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, spoke to Yossi Matias, Google's director of research, about artificial intelligence in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21.
MIT professor Daniela Rus, director of the school’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, spoke to Yossi Matias, Google's director of research, about artificial intelligence in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21.Patrick Tighe
Some of Boston’s leading experts on artificial intelligence and technology gathered in Davos last week, as they have for almost a decade, to fuel discussions focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, and ideas that may be a bit ahead of their time.
Despite an unusual tilt at the annual World Economic Forum towards politics and President Trump’s fast-changing foreign policy priorities, the Boston contingent mainly ignored the chaos at a one-day conference dubbed “Imagination in Action” and organized by Boston startup investor and educator John Werner.
For the ninth annual meetup he ran at Davos, Werner designed a program heavy on the implications of AI across myriad fields, from drug research and investing to labor markets and pop culture. “AI deserves getting people together to talk about what it means, what are the opportunities, what are the challenges,” he said this week after returning home to Brookline.
Werner partnered with AI labs at MIT and Stanford to pull together dozens of panels and accounting and consulting firm Deloitte signed on as a sponsor. About 2,500 people attended the free event.
Speakers included Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT president Sally Kornbluth, Bain Capital senior advisor and former co-chair Steve Pagliuca, Flagship Pioneering founder and chief executive Noubar Afeyan, and Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun.
They were joined by other AI luminaries, such as former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, former Google and Baidu AI researcher Andrew Ng, Google’s head of research Yossi Matias, and Stanford professor James Landay, who co-directs the California university’s AI effort known as the Institute for Human-Centered AI.
On stage being interviewed by Werner, LeCun explained his view that AI apps relying on current large language models, such as ChatGPT, will never reach human-level intelligence because the models can’t anticipate real world consequences the way even a child can.
“The basic architecture is not there,” he said. “Real intelligence comes from an understanding of the real world.”
But he predicted that new forms of AI developed from data in the physical world, messier and less structured than the writings used to train large language models, would soon emerge to let computers get closer to human intellect. “We’re going to see another AI revolution,” LeCun said. “The physical AI revolution.”
Pagliuca discussed how he has (and has not) used AI in his various roles as an investor and owner of the Boston Celtics. When a group he co-led took over the Celtics in 2002, he brought in data scientists to analyze the professional game, leading to AI-like models that helped recommend players to draft and strategies to use on the court.
“We were one of the pioneers in that, and now all the NBA teams have it,” Pagliuca said.
Northeastern president Aoun discussed how AI is helping scientists advance their research while possibly also eliminating the need for some roles.
“What is it that I as a human can do that AI cannot do?” he asked. “Which means that many of us are going to be obsolete as scientists. But at the same time, it’s going to elevate our game.”
Werner, who is a managing director at VC firm Link Ventures and a lecturer at MIT, likes to boast that his Davos gathering has often led the pack in discussing new ideas. OpenAI was still years away from releasing its wildly popular ChatGPT chat app when a 2019 version of the underlying model was a topic at the Davos gathering, he said.
This year, the ahead-of-its-time innovation was putting data centers in space. With data centers on Earth running short on electricity, putting the computer servers in orbit running on solar power has been raised as a potential solution.
Philip Johnston, co-founder and chief executive of Redmond, Washington-based startup Starcloud, pitched the idea at Werner’s confab.
Werner called it “the bat—t crazy idea that may become mainstream,” adding: “We’re always trying to push the envelope.”
😬 ‘I’m starting to worry about Massachusetts’: Is Boston’s tech and innovation scene withering? Read more from Globe correspondent Kara Miller.
💼 A not-so-safe-for-work networking event lands in Boston. Read more from business reporter Dana Gerber.
📱 Healey’s social media regulation plan faces an uphill legal battle. Read more from tech columnist Hiawatha Bray.
🏈 Court order barring Kalshi sports-betting market in Massachusetts is on hold. Read more from consumer reporter Sean P. Murphy.
💵 RSA Group, a Boston cybersecurity company comprising RSA (formerly known as SecurID) and Outseer (formerly known as RSA Fraud Risk & Intelligence), completed a debt restructuring with a new capital infusion of $135 million backed by the company’s existing lenders.
⚖️ Legal software startup Summize in Boston raised $50 million from investors including Maven Capital Partners, YFM Equity Partners, Kennet Partners, and Federated Hermes Private Equity.
🔒 Cybersecurity company Memcyco in Boston raised $37 million in a deal led by NAventures, the corporate venture arm of National Bank of Canada; E. León Jimenes; and PagsGroup, the family office of Steve Pagliuca.
🤖 Consumer robotics company iRobot in Bedford emerged from bankruptcy and completed its acquisition by Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co.
👋 Chip maker Analog Devices in Wilmington appointed Yoky Matsuoka, an executive officer of Panasonic Holdings and the former chief technology officer at Google/Nest, to its board of directors.
🩺 Health care oriented VC firm Flare Capital in Boston hired Kendall Cook as manager of events and community. Cook previously was events and operations manager at Pillar VC.
👀 Marketing software firm DemandScience in Danvers hired Aislinn Wright as senior vice president of product management. Wright previously was vice president of product management at EDB. The company also added Adam Kocoloski, a distinguished engineer at Airbnb, to its board of directors.
🏥 Medical AI company NucleicAI LLC in Boston hired Douglas Voet as principal engineering architect. Voet was previously senior principal software engineer at the Broad Institute.
🤝 Popular social media app TikTok said its Chinese owner, ByteDance, had struck a deal with a group of non-Chinese investors to create a new US TikTok, concluding a six-year legal saga.
What We’re Reading
Burritos from Heaven: Are drones the future of delivery? (The Verge)
Inside OpenAI’s big play for science (MIT Technology Review)
The Campus AI Crisis: Young graduates can’t find jobs. Colleges know they have to do something. But what? (New York Magazine)
👋 Thanks for reading. We’ll be will be back next Tuesday.
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Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman.