Artificial Intelligence (AI) Leadership Dinner, October 2017

On the evening of 17th October, Spectrum hosted a Leadership Dinner for AI-enabled businesses in association with Silverpeak, the technology investment bank, and Wiggin, the technology law firm.

AI is already redesigning how entire industries operate – from chatbots providing customer service support, automated virtual assistants, and art recommendations, to the machine learning that powers self-driving cars and platforms that can diagnose skin cancer. Three UK AI businesses were bought by some of the world’s biggest technology companies in recent years, including DeepMind (acquired by Google for a reported $400m in 2015), SwiftKey (bought by Microsoft for an estimated $250m) and Magic Pony Technology (acquired by Twitter for an estimated $150m).

We brought together 15 peers from AI businesses, at CEO and Chairman level, for a ‘Chatham House rule’ discussion around the continuously developing AI landscape during a private dinner in Central London.

The key points of debate and discussion were:

  • Naming your solution AI or artificial intelligence can actually hold it back. Instead, it may be better to offer solutions in which AI is merely the tool, the enabler – rather than the front-and-centre solution itself
  • There is an emotional response to AI, and, inevitably, a fundamental question exists as to whether AI is a “good thing”, or not
  • Proving the value of AI is a challenge. Beating the human baseline is a fundamental requisite in demonstrating the value of artificial intelligence
  • There will be a significant impact on jobs. Whilst jobs will be displaced, our guests were confident that new, higher-value jobs would be created as a result of AI
  • Human factors, such as common sense, and creativity, cannot be replicated by AI
  • Measurement is key. Switching from a rules-based system to AI was the recommended approach to tracking the benefit of artificial intelligence
  • AI success is based on proving it works: take the data and analyse it. The certainty of properly deployed AI reduces business risk
  • AI is at an early-stage
  • The decision to deploy AI solutions requires human intelligence!

To register your interest in attending future events, please contact Sarah Rush at Spectrum.