From Espresso to Exploring the Future of AI: My Day at Dublin Tech Summit 2024
A 6am start up the road from Carlingford with my brother and across the city by bus was met with an amazingly brewed espresso at Mister Magpie by the RDS. Sitting on the bridge, this busy and bustling cafe still managed an ambiance of calm, a must-visit for those needing a masterfully brewed caffeine hit.
Now onto the main event!
The Dublin Tech Summit 2024
A premier event showcasing the latest in technological advancements, the Dublin Tech Summit is held on May 29-30, at the RDS in Dublin. This year's summit brought together visionaries, innovators, and industry leaders from around the globe.
After spending an hour deciding on which of the fantastic events and speakers to attend, I focused on the popular topic of AI, a hotbed for development across tech firms. My day kicked off with a session titled "AI Insights: Perspectives on Ethics, Open Source, and Beyond."
Panel Highlights
One panel member that stood out was Anthony McLoughlin of BetterFutures.ai. He highlighted the need for more integration of AI in engineering operations and the challenges he is trying to overcome. This immediately got my attention with my manufacturing background, and finding out that most engineering firms at present use virtually no AI systems within their manufacturing was interesting. Using the example of emphasising the precision required when manufacturing jet engines, the need for 100% accuracy when dealing with safety components is vital, 98% accuracy just won’t cut it. His insights into the low adoption rates in these areas were eye-opening, showcasing the vast potential for growth.
Matthew Carrigan of HuggingFace.co attended, highlighting the charge of un-boxed AI along with the other panel members. Hugging Face is a machine learning (MI) and data science platform that lets users build, deploy and train machine learning models unlike Google Baird & ChatGPT. They have a leaderboard on the home page which ranks the top-performing models and chatbots on its platform, with thousands of developers in the community updating and improving models.
I had scheduled out the day meticulously, given the vast amount of speakers and events I wanted to attempt, it was vital not to get distracted. I got distracted!
An unexpected highlight of my day was running into an old friend I hadn’t seen in over 15 years, who was involved with the establishment of Vially, an organisation dedicated to digital inclusion. Coincidentally, I had been discussing Vially just 24 hours before we met. Vially's upcoming website scanning tool aims to ensure compliance with WCAG guidelines, crucial for meeting EAA and ADA standards. This tool will be essential for businesses aiming to avoid fines for non-compliance starting in 2025. I will be keeping an eye on what the government actions to assist what Vially achieve in the coming months, as without supports in place for small businesses, enforcing these fines could get messy I predict.
Keynote Speech by Sir Martin Sorrell
In the afternoon, I attended a keynote by Sir Martin Sorrell, hosted by Tim Lyons. Sorrell emphasised the future of AI in ad performance and creation, predicting significant staff reductions as AI streamlines processes. He stressed the importance of agility, taking back control through 1st party data, and utilising AI to remain competitive.
Much of my day was spent talking to vendors about chatbots and AI solutions, and I loved every second of it. I attended several more talks from founders, a cross-border meet by Tech Ireland thanks to the lovely people at Creative Spark Dundalk where cybersecurity was the topic of choice at my table, and even managed to discuss brewing and movie making with foreign delegates before the close of the day. The Dublin Tech Summit 2024 was an enriching experience, filled with innovation and inspiration. I look forward to returning next year.
Put it in your calendar!