Join us for an evening of short talks, panels and audience participation around the future of Artificial Intelligence. Hear from leaders in the field shaping this emerging technology for a variety of use-cases, from anti-trolling initiatives and social impact to clean energy and medicine.

AI will shape our future, it's up to this community to ensure the Public Good is considered in it's application.

Agenda:

Welcome - Peter Shanley from Civic Hall & Rizwan Habib from NY AI Meetup

CJ Adams, (Product Manager at Jigsaw)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamscj

CJ Adams is a product manager at Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet. Jigsaw uses machine learning to detect abusive language, threats, and harassment. The company is studying how computers can learn to understand the nuances and context of abusive language at scale. If successful, machine learning could help publishers and moderators improve comments on their platforms and enhance the exchange of ideas on the internet. Before joining Google, Adams worked with the Polaris Project, where he designed and built new tools for combating organized criminal networks - improving the flow of information between victims, service providers, and law enforcement officers in thousands of human trafficking cases each year. Adams has a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and an MBA from the University of Oxford.

Google Jigsaw: (Subsidiary of Google Alphabet) https://www.wired.com/2016/09/inside-googles-internet-justice-league-ai-powered-war-trolls/ / website: https://jigsaw.google.com/

Madeleine Clare Elish, (Researcher at Data & Society Research Institute)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcelish

Madeleine is a cultural anthropologist focusing on the social impact of artificial intelligence and automation. Her work investigates how new technologies affect understandings of values and ethical norms, particularly in professional, military and labor contexts. As a researcher with the Intelligence & Autonomy Initiative at Data & Society, she develops empirical and historical research in order to ground policy debates around the rise of machine intelligence. Madeleine is currently a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at Columbia University and previously earned an S.M. in Comparative Media Studies at MIT.

Jamil Ellis, (CTO at BlocPower)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamilellis

Jamil works at BlocPower, a platform connecting capital to investment grade green building projects in financially underserved communities. Jamil Ellis is a New York native, born and raised in Brooklyn. He graduated from Columbia University with a B.S. in Computer Engineering.

Panel Discussion with:

Amir Banifatemi, XPRIZE FOUNDATION

Speaker info: http://www.xprize.org/amir-banifatemi

XPRIZE is the world’s leading prize organization, creating global competitions to solves the grand challenges of our time. The team leading the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, a $5M competition, will be holding office hours at Civic Hall from 10/19 – 10/21– if you would like to learn more about how to compete in the prize, please book time here.

Adrienne Schmoeker, Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation

Speaker info: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmoeker

Adrienne is the Senior Project Manager for Open Innovation Initiatives in the Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation. She previously worked at Catchafire leading the expansion to San Francisco, Philadelphia and Raleigh-Durham.

Mayur Saxena (Founder, Droice Labs)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayursaxena1

Mayur is the founder of Droice Labs, a machine learning based personalized drug prescription assistant for doctors. Currently doing his Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University where he cofounded Ardent Cell Technologies, a cell therapeutics company entering clinical trials. Before joining Columbia he worked at Boston Consulting Group designing predictive models and precision medicine product pipelines for healthcare giants like Boston Scientific.

Peter Wakahiu Njenga (Founder/CTO, Behold.ai)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peternjenga

Peter Wakahiu Njenga is a founder of behold.ai, which helps radiologist make better medical decisions. He's received a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from Columbia University and BSc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of California at Berkeley. He previously worked at Facebook on machine learning for place search ranking and on messaging infrastructure. He also worked at Intel and AMD on chip verification.