Why is MLconf starting the AI Conference?
MLconf started in 2012 as collaboration with Danny Bickson and Carlos Guestrin from the Machine Learning department at Carnegie Mellon University. Courtney asked Danny to speak at our geekSessions event on Big Data in 2011 along with Eric Bieschke the CTO of Pandora and a few other people tackling ML problems at scale. We went on to develop MLconf as an independent, vendor neutral event series, focusing on combining both practical and theoretical presentations on ML in real-world applications, while continuing to collaborate with Carlos and Danny on their Data Science Summit events which were acquired with Turi in 2016.
The market has changed dramatically in the last few years. In 2010, people were working in data science but it was being called everything from analytics to big data. When we started MLconf in 2012, the ML space was just starting to organize behind a few tool sets and open source frameworks. We wanted to create a community where everyone who was generally working in the space could meet and collaborate. Today, we host annual MLconf events in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Atlanta and we see the MLconf events and the Machine Learning space growing dramatically each year with major support from top technology companies and a vibrant startup ecosystem.
When we look out a few more years, we see some form of ML based technology becoming a pervasive component of most applications in the same way that database technology is today. We’re thrilled to help create environments and communities where people connect, share and collaborate around this fast growing technology. At the same time we believe that AI deserves it’s own focus. Although there is invariably overlap between the two, we think that MLconf will continue to support the Machine Learning community as it explodes into every industry, improving existing applications and creating exciting new applications and software capabilities that have yet to be discovered and supporting the new industry that is being created around Machine Learning technology.
How will the AI Conference be different?
The AI conference will focus on emerging technology in Artificial Intelligence with a specific focus around projects, teams and people who are working on Artificial General Intelligence and related topics. In addition to deeply technical presentations on AI, we will also host presentations on topics in law, ethics, safety, and governance, as we believe those are interesting topics and important dimensions to address in this growing field. As we have always done with MLconf, we will engage the community to help us define what The AI Conference should be. Our first event will be in June of 2017. If you would like to participate, please contact us here. We’re looking forward to the conversation!
About the Blogger:
Shon Burton is the Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors at MLconf, and CEO at HiringSolved.
