World Summit AI
USA Programme

As AI becomes central to economic and military power, it is reshaping the geopolitical landscape, from global tech alliances to disinformation campaigns. No longer just a tool, AI is a force multiplier in the struggle for influence and security.

In this timely keynote, Nina Jankowicz, an expert on information warfare and digital authoritarianism, draws on her experience advising governments and leading the American Sunlight Project to explore how AI intersects with rising global tensions. What new power dynamics are emerging? How can democracies respond to authoritarian digital control? And how do we ensure AI supports progress, not polarisation?

AI dystopia is now the default. Unless a lot of people speak out, things will get darker and darker from here.

In this fireside chat, renowned AI scientist, skeptic, and enterpreneur Gary Marcus confronts the widening gap between hype and harm in artificial intelligence.  Drawing on his extensive work advising governments and challenging tech giants, building on years of correctly anticipating the weaknesses of large language models, Marcus offers a sharp, evidence-backed critique of today’s AI trajectory—and tells us what must change to steer humanity toward safer, more human-centered outcomes.  Whether you love AI or hate it, this is both a wake-up call and a call to action.

Amid fears of AI-fueled collapse, award-winning author Payal Arora offers a powerful counterpoint: across the Global South, digital optimism thrives. 

Drawing on fieldwork in Brazil, India, and Bangladesh, she explores how marginalized youth embrace technology as a tool for self-actualization, care, and collective reinvention. With insights from feminist tech activists and Indigenous sustainability models, Arora challenges us to move beyond Western dystopias—and design with hope.

This forward-thinking session will address the shift from AI Agents to an Agentic Spectrum or continuum, how human oversight and control merging with Agentic workflows, and how all of this will unfold in the next couple of months.

Innovation at all costs’ is no longer a viable option for AI architects and innovators. Reducing the cost of AI innovation without compromising speed of innovation or time to market is the new strategic imperative of the agentic AI era. Done right, key-value caching, or KVCache, can do the heavy lifting for you, significantly reducing your time to first token, cost per token, and lowering your overall cost of innovation. Join Arthur Rasmusson to learn how to design and implement caching algorithms to improve your token economics.

Recent studies show that 51% of CEOs surveyed say they are hiring for generative AI roles that did not exist recently. Also, 47% of executives report a lack of skills to implement AI at scale. With the rise of AI agents, the role of professionals will shift fast, and new challenges and opportunities will push everyone to rethink traditional approaches to work and skills. Learn about what organisations and education systems can do to prepare the workforce, and what current and future professionals can do today to start their AI journey.

How is AI reshaping what it means to be human? Prof. Thorsten O. Zander—one of the foremost experts in neuroadaptive technology—explores how brain-computer interfaces and intelligent systems are pushing the boundaries of human potential. 

From adaptive environments to direct brain-to-machine communication, he shows how these developments are turning science fiction into reality.

Join Mohsen Moazami, President of International at Groq, for an in-depth fireside chat exploring how next-gen compute is reshaping the global AI landscape – faster, more efficient, and increasingly sovereign. What are the demands of the global AI ecosystem? How are those demands being met and what work still needs to be done? With the Gulf region, Canada, the US, and more making bold investments in AI infrastructure, this session will spotlight the intersection of geopolitical ambition, high-performance hardware, and national AI strategy. From energy-conscious chips to AI-native data centers, what does it take to build an AI-ready future? Expect sharp insights on tech sovereignty, supply chains, and how Groq is at the heart of this new industrial wave, bringing AI closer to users.

Dr. Ramses Alcaide, a neuroscientist and the driving force behind Neurable, will discuss the crucial role of AI in advancing neuroscience. He'll provide an inside look at how Neurable utilizes AI to decode brain activity, leading to the development of cutting-edge BCI technology. This session will highlight the intersection of AI and neuroscience, showcasing how these fields are converging to create powerful tools for enhancing human potential.

In today's rapidly evolving AI landscape, universities are pivotal in equipping the next generation of developers with essential AI skills. This panel session will explore how educational institutions can adapt their curricula and teaching methods to prepare students for an AI-driven world. Join us for actionable insights from industry and academia on how to shape the future of work, build learning plans, and responsibly harness AI’s potential.  

Productizing AI—turning machine learning models into scalable, user-facing solutions—offers substantial benefits. However, this transition also brings significant risks, including model drift, biased outcomes, lack of transparency, ethical concerns, and challenges in ensuring robustness, fairness, and regulatory compliance. 

As AI becomes embedded in core products and services, this conversation sits at the intersection of technology, business, and ethics.

As AI systems shape everything from healthcare to hiring, who gets to build them—and who gets left behind—matters more than ever. This session brings together two leading voices working to make AI more inclusive. 
Celina Lee and Tess Posner share insights from their work empowering underrepresented communities through education, competitions, and access to real-world opportunities. What does it take to democratize AI, and what’s at stake if we don’t?

As artificial intelligence moves into the physical world, a new era of responsive environments and perceptive machines is emerging. Dr. Ivan Poupyrev—renowned inventor and CEO of Archetype AI—shares insights from his groundbreaking work building a real-time understanding of the physical world using sensor data and foundation models. 

In this keynote, Poupyrev explores how Physical AI transforms interaction design, opens up new industries, and reshapes our relationship with the built environment. What does it mean when reality itself becomes machine-readable?

Explore the evolving landscape of AI innovation, where deploying AI agents can revolutionize business outcomes with immediate impact. We will examine examples of how advanced orchestration techniques can enhance system efficiency and redefine workforce productivity, directly influencing the strategic priorities of CIOs. Discover how leaders in this field develop AI applications that are inherently trustworthy and risk-aware. Whether you are starting your AI journey or seeking to refine your current approach, this session provides strategic insights to harness AI's transformative potential and empowers CIOs to drive sustainable business success.

AI systems are only as smart as the data infrastructure behind them. In this session, van Luijt, explores how vector databases have become essential to building scalable, responsive, and semantically aware AI applications. 

From powering retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to enabling real-time recommendations and search, discover why the future of AI depends on rethinking how we store and retrieve data.

What happens when AI learns by interacting with the world, not just reading about it? Andrew Marmon explores how world models—AI systems that generate and simulate realistic environments—can train agents to perform real-world tasks, from following instructions to navigating physical spaces. A step toward AI that’s grounded, capable, and ready to act.

As AI becomes more integrated into day-to-day business operations, a new wave of tools is emerging—focused not on public LLMs, but on private, secure, and tailored AI agents. This session brings together leaders at the forefront of this shift.

Under severe political pressure from authoritarian governments, democratic governance of AI is giving way to new forms of AI itself as a kind of governance structure. At the same time, global crises are expanding, humanitarian budgets are collapsing, and new demands for humanitarians to use AI to "do more with less" are rising. 

How can humanitarians respond within the new circumstances of authoritarian AI governance to use AI safely, ethically and effectively to benefit vulnerable communities without placing them at greater risk? 

This discussion sets out to answer a big question: how do we give AI an internal model of the messy, physical world that’s good enough for real-world decisions? We’ll meet three founders attacking that problem from very different angles—foundation models, ultra-endurance drones, and data pipelines—and then look for common lessons.

What will it take to build AI systems that are secure, scalable, and aligned with human needs? In this session, Adrian Ludwig- Chief Architect at Tools for Humanity - offers a behind-the-scenes look at the technical architecture powering the company’s bold vision: AI aligned with verified human identity. Best known for creating the Orb, a device used to establish proof of personhood for the World project, Tools for Humanity is tackling one of the most urgent challenges in the AI era—how to distinguish people from bots at global scale. Ludwig unpacks the systems behind privacy-preserving humanness verification, decentralized infrastructure, and the cryptographic foundations needed to enable inclusive, AI-ready platforms for billions of users.

As the climate crisis accelerates, so does the urgency for intelligent, scalable solutions. In this session, Daniel Erasmus introduces ClimateGPT, a platform using AI to model complex climate scenarios, support evidence-based policy, and empower local and global action. From carbon tracking to climate adaptation planning, discover how AI can help turn data into decisions—and hope into action.

From data poisoning to prompt attacks, this session explores the hidden vulnerabilities in today’s models. 

Learn how researchers are stress-testing AI to build systems that are safer, more secure, and harder to fool.

AI is quietly transforming Hollywood’s production pipeline, from previsualization and worldbuilding to full video generation, editing and visual effects. While these tools offer speed, scalability, and creative flexibility, they also raise important questions around authorship and artistic voice.

In this fireside chat, Cecilia Shen, CEO and Co-Founder of Cybever, shares how she and her team are using AI to support, not replace, the creative process. Drawing from real-world collaborations with studios and creators, she will explore how AI can streamline production workflows while preserving the craft at the heart of storytelling.

This keynote explores how Business AI innovations across enterprise applications are delivering value at scale and driving measurable returns on investment. Learn how unified AI copilots embedded throughout the application landscape, together with a growing ecosystem of AI agents automating tasks in finance, supply chain, and sales, are helping organizations accelerate decision making and enhance operational efficiency.

AI is rewriting how we relate to the world—what we buy, what we hear, how we care for ourselves. In this forward-looking session, leaders from tech, consumer goods, and enterprise software explore how AI is creating deeply personalised experiences at massive scale. From adaptive supply chains and real-time recommendations to AI-informed skincare and wellness, this conversation dives into the growing overlap between intelligence, identity, and individual agency. What does a truly personalised future look like—and who gets to shape it?

How do you quantify global change and its implications in real time, rather than wait 3 months for poor quality government data and listen to anecdotes from pundits?  MacroX’s multimodal economist that synthesizes satellite imagery, social data, text, and other alternative data was successfully live tested at a leading $1T+ AUM manager for almost a year, where it substantially outperformed traditional economists in identifying alpha opportunities while offering a dramatic reduction in alternative data, AI, and expert human costs. 
In this session, Apurv demonstrates how investors and decision-makers can use the Multimodal Economist to answer questions ranging from estimating Liberation Day growth shocks to the GDP to whether you should buy a home now.

Venture capital catalyzes technological advancements by transforming novel ideas into marketable realities. In the realm of deep technology, or “deep tech,” this transformation is particularly crucial. Deep tech encompasses scientific and engineering innovations that have the potential to revolutionize industries and address pressing global challenges.