‘There’ll be a million billionaires on this planet because of AI’ – Sri Satish Ambati, H2O.ai

The world’s top companies are either already operating on an “AI-first” basis or preparing to, according to H2O.ai co-founder and CEO Sri Satish Ambati.

Sri (pictured above) has said that any company not doing so can expect to be left behind: “We have democratized AI. Democratizing AGI is right around the corner, and it is going to create abundance. There’ll be a million billionaires on this planet because of AI. The largest companies are already becoming AI-first. So if you’re not using AI, you won’t be in the top 100 companies in the world.”

Sri’s comments were made as part of a panel discussion on AI governance and regulation at Collision in Toronto. 

The discussion also featured Eticas.ai founder and CEO Gemma Galdón-Clavell, and Mayer Brown privacy and cybersecurity partner Dominique Shelton Leipzig, who said a proactive approach was needed from companies, to ensure early compliance with international codes of conduct:

“We have 100 countries right now on six continents that have developed draft regulatory frameworks around AI governance, so we’re not in the wild, wild west … It’s less of a question of what the role should be, because governments have already stepped in on six continents.” 

“It’s really a question of companies understanding what the governments are saying and implementing it proactively, not waiting until the last second, when the laws go into effect,” Dominique added.

The panel also spoke on bias in AI, with Gemma offering a warning on how to avoid bad AI outcomes: “The key thing that people who are developing need to understand is when your system is biased or when it illuminates, it’s leading to bad outcomes. So your system is worse because of this. And we’re seeing more and more companies being very wary of this.” 

Gemma also touched on second-hand liability in AI, when people purchase AI models from third parties that have not done their due diligence in testing, and the liability then is transferred to the purchaser: “Bias illumination, re-identification – these are not bugs, these are features in AI systems. If you don’t monitor them, your system will not perform well.”

The panel highlighted the importance of auditing your AI systems, with Gemma saying: “So if you don’t audit your systems, you should not go to market. If you do not audit your systems, you should not be putting your technology in the hands of people in the medical domain, in the hiring domain, in the security domain, in education. It is irresponsible to do that and it will kill your company, it will kill your reputation for the next companies that you could be building.”

Dominique also touched on this, adding: “It’s a continuous thing … testing, monitoring and auditing against the company’s values, because the AI won’t know on its own what is accurate in your use-case or not.“

The comments were made as part of a wider discussion on AI 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 (a cloud-based password management tool)
• 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

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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