Vasant Dhar keynote speaker

Artificial Intelligence has reached the point where it can make decisions on its own, potentially freeing up millions of hours for human workers. But an important question remains: when should it be allowed to?

Helping leaders understand how and when to strategically deploy and monitor AI tools is Vasant Dhar, Ph.D. A professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and the Center for Data Science, he’s a machine learning pioneer who was responsible for the first AI prediction system on Wall Street in the 1980s.

Through unparallelled experience and expertise, he brings clarity to the most important areas of concern created by modern AI – truth, trust and governance.

“Early AI systems were designed to reason from the knowledge we gave them. By contrast, today’s AI systems are incredibly intelligent learning machines that are created more in our own image,” explains Dhar, whose research spans finance, health care, media and consumer technology. “As a result, they’ve inherited some of our worst tendencies like lying for deception and manipulation. It’s vital for us to get our heads around the question of when we can trust machines to make decisions and how they should be governed.”

A “pracademic” who is both a transformative AI practitioner and a renowned academic, Dhar expertly advises business and government leaders alike. Distilling decades of research into an accessible guide for business leaders, policymakers and everyday citizens, Dhar’s latest book is “Thinking With Machines: The Brave New World of AI”. He’s also creator and host of the companion podcast “Brave New World.”

An authentic voice who’s been in the machine learning space since its earliest days, his practical message grounded in the history of AI helps leaders make better decisions about today’s powerful iterations of the technology.

“Today’s AI are the first machines ever created by humanity without a purpose, they’re just designed to be intelligent for their own sake,” explains Dhar, co-author of a groundbreaking paper on olfactory AI – the ability for machines to recognize and classify smells the way they already process images or speech – which could have profound implications on disease detection, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and even cancer. “It’s vital to understand how we got here in order to understand the capabilities of the latest AI and the potential problems that can be created.”

Showing organizations how to take AI from vision to implementation, Dhar provides an accessible risk/reward lens that boosts competitiveness while applying practical governance policies. A charismatic, memorable speaker, he’s helping to construct a balanced, productive and prosperous future where humans and machines work together both safely and effectively.