A packed house at DPI for Tech Pulse 2030.
The popular event series Tech Pulse 2030 made its debut at DPI this month. A collaboration with the tech accelerator 1871 and AI 2030, Tech Pulse 2030 showcases visionary thinkers and doers in AI, Web3, fintech, and quantum computing.
Hosted by Xiaochen Zhang, founder and CEO of FinTech4Good and AI 2030, the Tech Pulse 2030 series kicked off at DPI with “AI Labs Shaping Tomorrow,” featuring Anne Lee, chief technology officer for Nokia Bell Labs’ AI Research Lab, and Taylor Childers, computer scientist at the Leadership Computing Facility division at Argonne National Laboratory. More than 150 people packed the Discovery Room to network, eat pizza, and hear about the latest in AI research and technology.
An established event, a new location
Brad Spirrison, DPI’s corporate engagement lead for R&D and an entrepreneur-in-residence at 1871, recalled the nascent era of Chicago’s tech scene. In those days of dial-up internet, tech entrepreneurs, academics, and anyone interested in the early worldwide web met up on the first Tuesday of each month to share ideas and form collaborations. With society in “the dial-up era of AI,” Spirrison said, Tech Pulse 2030 has an important role to play.
“We want this to be your community,” he said.
Zhang noted some new faces, and for their benefit he explained that 2030 isn’t a hard deadline but rather intended to communicate the urgency of implementing responsible AI before it’s too late. He said Tech Pulse events are also being held in New York and coming to Washington, DC this fall.
The view from the labs
With more than three decades of experience at Nokia, dating back to when it was called Lucent Technologies, Lee remembered being intrigued by wireless cellular communication — and someone warning her there was no future in mobile phones. She wisely ignored that warning and made a career in telecom. AI caught her eye in a similar way.
Lee said the concept has gone through “springs and winters” since its first real introduction in 1956, but clearly, “we’re coming out of the winter for AI.”
Guided by questions from Zhang, Lee and Taylor discussed:
- Use cases for AI in their respective fields (predictive maintenance and operations, an AI-native 6G network, operational stability in nuclear fusion reactors). If you have a well-defined dataset and a well-defined output, Childers said, AI can help solve your problem.
- Longer-term possibilities like the emergence of large-world models based on understanding the real physical world
- How to minimize the energy consumption — and thus the cost — that AI requires
- The need for regulation of AI, including, Childers said, guardrails around data provenance: “maybe a blockchain for data?”
Final thoughts
The AI revolution is exciting, Lee said, but she advised innovators and consumers to be careful, because AI “has the potential to do a lot of harm.”
On a lighter note, as a Star Trek fan, Childers has enjoyed watching some of the technology from the TV show appear in real life over the years, like tablet computers and videoconferencing. He’s hoping, now, that AI will enable a fully operational tricorder.
Up next
The next Tech Pulse 2030 event is July 8, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., at DPI; the topic will be announced soon..
Author: Jeanie Chung