The first edition of AI Convention Europe, the international event devoted to the discovery of Artificial Intelligence, took place the 4th of October at BluePoint Brussels.
With 300 pre-event registrations, almost 250 participants, 18 qualified speakers and 6 sponsors, the conference was an acclaimed success. B2B players, startups, institutional representatives and AI experts – with transversal interests in Business, Finance, Enterprise, Industry, Health, Research, Education, Society – were among the professionals that gathered together in Brussels.
The convention was opened by Orhan Erenberk, President of TIMGlobal Media, publisher of the magazine IEN Europe and organizer of the event with the support of Mar-Com Event, followed by the keynote speaker Mieke De Ketelaere, Customer Intelligence Director at SAS and Nominee ICT Woman of the Year 2018. “Almost 90% of the population doesn’t really know what AI is, so I think that it’s important to create a demystification session at a level where people can understand what AI really entails. I believe that this should be the main task of every person working in AI”, declared Mieke De Ketelaere.
AI USE CASES
The intense program of the conference saw AI use cases as fil rouge of the convention. Dealing with different topics such as Cybersecurity, Customer Service, Financial Services and Industrial Automation, the specialists invited to take floor discussed the challenges and opportunities coming from the responsible adoption of AI for the improvement of our lives at every level.
“People are aware of AI and they want to have access to this technology also in their professional lives: They want to be supported by technology. Therefore, companies now feel that their working style is not good enough anymore. In many cases, they’ve heard about Artificial Intelligence, but they don’t know how to get started. That’s why I think that looking at use cases can be a good starting point to dissolve frictions and frustrations” said Myriam Broeders, CTO at Microsoft Belgium-Luxembourg.
LAW & ETHICS
When speaking about AI, topics such as compliance, sustainability and responsible innovation are of primary importance to really get the whole picture. That’s why international experts such as Mona Caroline Chammas, Attorney, Businesses and Governments Counsel, were invited to take floor and explain to the audience if AI is more a constraint or a competitive advantage, from a legal point of view.
“Who is going to decide what’s fair and what’s not fair on automated decisions made by AI? Different experts with different backgrounds have to sit together and define what is acceptable: Data Scientists, Business Decision Makers, and even Psychologists” said Mieke De Ketelaere, while discussing about AI and ethical issues.
SPONSORS
Cutting-edge AI innovations have been presented to the public by six sponsors: Moonoia, Contextor and Shoot & Prove introduced their jointly developed document processing solution, which intelligently automates back-end office operations. Along with them, icity.brussels, ThinkNexT, TIMi, Excellium and Eutronics illustrated their solutions and most interesting use cases.
AI Convention Europe will come back next year. Stay tuned!
For more information: ai-convention.com
Sara Ibrahim
