With 勛圖惇蹋 innovators front and centre, Collision conference wraps up five-year Toronto run
Budding entrepreneurs, leading scientists and future business leaders from the University of Toronto community played a leading role at the 2024 Collision tech conference in downtown Toronto.
Running over three days this week, the conference drew some 40,000 attendees from across the spheres of tech, business and media, including more than 1,600 startups and 700 investors.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies and their impact on business and society were key themes for many of the conferences keynotes and exhibits so it was no surprise that 勛圖惇蹋s AI luminaries were front and centre.
They included 勛圖惇蹋 alumnus Aidan Gomez, co-founder of which has raised hundreds of millions from investors and generated significant industry buzz.
He urged businesses to commit to adopting AI tools to support their workers.
Making sure that youre delivering the tools that your employees need to be competitive and effective is crucial, Gomez said during his talk on Tuesday.
He added that augmentation of workforces with AI co-pilots and assistants is inevitable including in industries that might not stand out as obvious adopters of the technology. He shared the example of a natural resources insurance firm that built an AI co-pilot powered by to help their actuaries speed up their research, craft more accurate bids and win more contracts.
I never would have thought a natural resources insurance company would be adopting LLMs [large language models], but they are, and its having an impact. Its actually helping them win more business, Gomez said. So I think the technology is completely horizontal.
Gomez also cited the medical sector particularly, drug discovery as another area thats poised to benefit massively from AI advances.
Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton, the influential computer scientist often dubbed the godfather of AI, also identified medical care and productivity as two key areas that will see significant improvements thanks to AI. However, much of his discussion, titled "Can We Control AI?", focused on his previously-cited concerns about given the current race to develop the technology and the absence of sufficient safeguards.
Even if Im totally benevolent and I just want to achieve what you asked me to achieve, Ill realize that if I get more control, it will be easier to do that, Hinton said of AI agents.
And actually, if these things are much smarter than us, theyll realize: Just take the control away from people and it will be much more efficient and that seems to be like a very slippery path.
Gomez, for his part, said he doesnt believe AI poses a serious threat.
The notion that the technology is going to start self-improving, that its going to start manipulating people, that its going to take over, seize power and displace humans: thats a sci-fi narrative, he said. I am empathetic to it weve been writing stories about that exact scenario for decades, since before computers, and so its very deeply embedded in our cultural brainstems ... I just dont think its true.
Earlier at the conference, Raquel Urtasun, founder of self-driving trucking startup , spoke about generative AI and how Waabi is applying the technology to autonomous trucks. Her keynote took place following the companys announcement that it raised US$200 million in Series B funding to support the deployment of driverless trucks in 2025.
Everything will be controlled by generative AI systems inside the vehicle and nothing else. This is a breakthrough for the industry, where such a thing has never happened before, said Urtasun, a professor in the department of computer science in 勛圖惇蹋's Faculty of Arts & Science.
The conference also featured demos from other promising 勛圖惇蹋 startups including , which has invented sustainable alternatives to plastics and is now using machine learning to accelerate biomaterials discovery.
Our platform allows us to design effective biomaterials five times faster and with 92 per cent less cost compared to our industry, said co-founder and CEO Nuha Siddiqui.
During the conference, 勛圖惇蹋s booth near the main stage featured exhibits from , , academic divisions and the Innovations and Partnerships Office. 勛圖惇蹋s was also at Collision as one of the organizers of the Black Innovation Zone.
Collision 2024 marked the fifth and final edition of the annual conference in Toronto.