AI’s Potential: From Policy to Posterity

AI-driven automation will transform the economy over the coming years and decades. The challenge for investors, founders and policymakers will be to update, strengthen, and adapt our policies and our thinking, to respond to the economic effects of AI. Beyond the hype, there are very real reasons to be concerned about the future of work in the age of artificial intelligence. According to some estimates, between 35 and 50 percent of jobs that currently exist in the United States could be automated over the next three decades. The rapid adoption and application of artificial intelligence, combined with access to big data and better hardware processing capabilities, means we are literally changing the face of blue and white collar jobs.

During the first half of the event, AI’s Potential: From Policy to Posterity, recently announced Venture Partner, Ken Denman and Founding General Partner, Bill Malloy, led a thought provoking conversation around how AI-driven automation will transform the economy over the coming years and decades. He was joined by panelists James Cham, Partner at Bloomberg Beta; Zavain Dar, Principal at Lux Capital; and Vijay Reddy, Investment Manager at Intel Capital.

We closed the night tackling the questions surrounding what kind of AI infrastructure we’ll need for the new AI era, with Douglas Bemis, CTO and Co-Founder at Uber AI Labs; Christian Reilly, Co-Founder of MedNition; Gus Katsiapis, Senior Staff Software Engineer, Google; and Prateek Joshi, Founder of Pluto AI. Olga Orda, VP Marketing at Digamma.ai lead the discussion.

Things we referred to at the event (that you are definitely going to want to click on):

• Scanning The Future, Radiologists See Their Jobs At Risk
• 20 Bullets on Artificial Intelligence from Lux Capital’s Zavain Dar
• Larry Summers: The robots are coming, whether Trump’s Treasury secretary admits it or not
• Beijing Wants A.I. to Be Made in China by 2030

And of course, a shoutout to our portfolio companies doing amazing things around AI. (P.S. did we mention they’re hiring!)

• Uber AI Labs gathers top scientists and engineers to create the next generation of machine learning algorithms to improve the lives of millions of people worldwide.
• At Affinity, they’re building the future of collective intelligence and they want you to be a part of it.
• Node’s vision, under the direction of Falon Fatemi, is to connect people with opportunity at massive scale.
• Sourcegraph believes code intelligence can help bring the future sooner. Our long-term vision is to make it so everyone, in every community, in every country, and in every industry can create products using the best technology.
• Diamond is a new new personal system, to help manage all your information very quickly and easily, from anywhere.

Thank you to everyone who sent in their questions about artificial intelligence. You can continue the conversation with the hashtag #PolicyToPosterity. And be sure to follow @kendenman, @zavaindar, @jamescham, @ReddyVijayB, @bmalloyIII and @swayventures.

This event was brought to you in collaboration with our co-host, Digamma.ai. The team at Digamma.ai are machine learning consultants and engineers based in the Bay Area with over 100 employees and thirteen years of experience building AI and machine learning solutions for startups and enterprises.

Originally published at swayvc.com on September 28, 2017.