‘Everyone should use AI as a tool against AI itself if their jobs are going to get displaced’ – Nasrin Mostafazadeh, Verneek

Audiences at Collision in Toronto have been challenged to view AI not as a threat, but a way to “level the playing field” for humans, and a driver of equality.

Verneek founder and CEO, Nasrin Mostafazadeh emphasized AI’s transformative potential for individuals, businesses, and even society as a whole:

“Everyone should use AI as a tool against AI itself ,if their jobs are going to get displaced. AI is not merely a threat but a tool that amplifies human capabilities and productivity. AI should be looked at as a productivity tool that will make us all more equal.”

During the discussion, Nasrin was joined by Vijay Karunamurthy, CTO of Scale AI, who elaborated on the challenges of AI integration: “We take the approach of testing and evaluation first, testing for security, testing for capabilities, to ensure that humans using these models can trust them and deploy them successfully.”

Nasrin echoed Vijay’s sentiments, and said AI would not reach its full potential overnight:

“Look, we are all sitting here more than a year after ChatGPT came out, and believe it or not, some of the largest Fortune 500 companies in the US are actually annotating, hand annotating their documents… and this reality underscores the ongoing evolution and practical applications of AI.”

Nasrin and Vijay’s comments were made as part of a wider discussion on responsible AI deployment and its potential to be used to shape future societal landscapes at Collision, which is returning to Toronto for its sixth year. Global founders, CEOs, investors and members of the media have come to the city to make deals and experience North America’s thriving tech ecosystem.

More than 1,600 startups are taking part in Collision 2024 – the highest number of startups ever at a Collision event. 45 percent of these are women-founded, and startups have travelled to Toronto from countries including Nigeria, the Republic of Korea, Uruguay, Japan, Italy, Ghana, Pakistan and beyond.

In total, more than 37,800 attendees have gathered at the event, as well as 570 speakers and 1,003 members of the media, to explore business opportunities with an international audience.

739 investors are attending Collision, including Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures; Wesley Chan, co-founder and managing partner of FPV Ventures; and Nigel Morris, co-founder and managing partner of QED Investors, as well as nine companies on the Forbes Midas List, and 12 investors from those firms.

Top speakers at Collision include:

• Geoffrey Hinton, Godfather of AI
• Maria Sharapova, entrepreneur and tennis legend
• Aidan Gomez, founder and CEO of Cohere (an AI for enterprise and large language model company, which raised US$450 million at a US$5 billion valuation in June 2024)
• Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi (a Canadian autonomous trucking company)
• Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password
• Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz (a cloud security platform)
• Alex Israel, co-founder and CEO of Metropolis (an AI and computer vision platform)
• Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (an AI chip startup)
• Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans
• Autumn Peltier, Indigenous rights activist

About Web Summit: 

Web Summit runs the world’s largest technology events, connecting people and ideas that change the world. Half a million people have attended Web Summit events – Web Summit in Europe, Web Summit Rio in South America, Collision in North America, Web Summit Qatar in the Middle East, and RISE in Asia – since the company’s beginnings as a 150-person conference in Dublin in 2009.

This year alone, Web Summit has hosted sold-out events in Qatar, which welcomed more than 15,000 attendees, and in Rio, where more than 34,000 people took part. Our events have been supported by partners including the Qatar Investment Authority, Snap, Deloitte, TikTok, Huawei, Microsoft, Shell, Palo Alto Networks, EY, Builder.ai and Qatar Airways. 

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Useful links

• Collision website: https://collisionconf.com/ 
• Collision media kit: https://collisionconf.com/media/media-kit  
• Collision images: https://flickr.com/photos/collisionconf 
• About Web Summit: about.websummit.com