In the past year, generative AI has transformed the landscape of artificial intelligence, unlocking groundbreaking innovations and enabling applications that once seemed out of reach. 

This keynote takes you on a journey through the evolution of AI, showcasing its immense potential for businesses, from automating mundane tasks to driving complex decision-making. But with great power comes great responsibility. 

This session doesn’t shy away from addressing the pressing risks generative AI poses to people and the planet, such as misuse, manipulation, and ethical dilemmas. Anchored in the "10 Commandments", the talk equips attendees with actionable insights towards business to harness this technology responsibly. 

Discover how embracing these guiding principles can help businesses seize AI’s transformative potential while steering clear of another AI winter. Together, let’s shape a future where innovation and accountability go hand in hand.

AI is everywhere, yet only 25% of companies are truly unlocking its value. The open question is: Why hasn’t this number moved, even with all the progress we’ve made in the past years? 

The answer is simple: Because success isn’t just about tools, it’s about rethinking how people and technology work together. It is about going beyond the logical thinking, into creative and critical thinking. AI and AI agents hold promise, but without redesigning processes and clarifying human leadership, impact stalls. 

Leading companies don’t just deploy, they reshape, reinvent, and invest where it truly matters. This keynote explores not only the latest insights, but also foresights into where AI is heading next. 

The audience will examine both the value and the limitations of the latest AI technologies. They’ll gain clarity on where human leadership is irreplaceable and reveal the deeper transformation required to turn AI into lasting impact.  

During the last months, generative AI has revolutionised the field of AI, allowing for the creation of new and innovative applications that were once unimaginable before.

This keynote will explore history and future value that generative AI brings to companies and society, from creating lifelike visual and audio content to improving medical research and aiding in scientific discovery. However, this talk will also highlight the potential risks associated with generative AI for people and planet, including issues of misuse and manipulation.

By balancing the opportunities and challenges of this cutting-edge technology, we can ensure a bright and responsible future and avoid another AI winter.

In this new keynote, Mieke explores the "Banality of Evil" in the context of the recent AI companion chatbots powered by generative AI.

To the audience, it will become clear that the loneliness epidemic in society, combined with uncontrolled AI development, can lead to harmful interactions with chatbots. Mieke's current observation of self-delusion in certain AI development teams raises new concerns at the level of transparency and responsibility needs in the dislocated AI supply chain.

The potential toxicity in the solutions in combination with the search for artificial intimacy by vunerable end-users is highlighted and emphasizes the need for more accountability, proper regulation and oversight.

At the end, Mieke will draw parallels to the regulation of other industries in the past, suggesting that next to the urgent need of multi-disciplinary teams also well-funded and well-staffed regulation agencies are necessary to address the challenges posed by AI companion chatbots in order to protect society in the future.

It is a fact. Machines with common sense that actually understand what’s going on, just like we humans do, are far more likely to be reliable, and produce sensible results, than those that rely on statistics alone. But let’s be clear: these systems don’t exist yet and there are a few other ingredients we will need to think through first together.

Trustworthy AI has to start with good engineering and business practices, mandated by laws and industry standards, both of which are currently largely absent. Too much of AI thus far has consisted of short-term solutions, code that gets a system to work immediately, without a critical layer of engineering guarantees that are often taken for granted in other fields. Do we currently have design procedures for making guarantees that given AI systems work within a certain tolerance, the way an auto part or airplane manufacturer would be required to do? No.

The assumption in AI has generally been that if it works accurate enough to be useful, then that’s good enough, but that casual attitude is not appropriate when the stakes are high. But this time of over now.

The European Commission has put guidelines in place for trustworthy AI. 7 amendments have been defined. Do you know them? Have you acted upon them as a business or as an engineer?

This session will take you to the current state of the art information on the requirements for trustworthy AI. It will highlight the current pain points and deliver insights on potential solutions in order to make sure that you can take up your accountability as business owner and developer now and in the future.

For the successful adoption of AI, we need more female leaders. Why? Well, as AI projects succeed on 4 factors (data, technology, people and processes), women normally possess the right qualities to lead projects to build real-world AI products more successfully as they fully master the enablement of an environment for collaboration and inclusion.

John Naisbitt once said: “The most exciting breakthroughs of the twenty-first century will not occur because of technology, but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human”. This seems odd in the world of artificial intelligence full of robots and automated machines, but when looking more closely at what’s currently needed to increase AI adoption, it all makes sense.

In order to solve the above challenges of AI adoption and in order to build more successful AI products, we need to focus on a more collaborative and community-driven approach. How can we create an environment which takes into account opinions from different stakeholders, especially those who are under-represented? What is limiting us from creating a multidisciplinary debate around our AI solutions? What is needed to have access to AI translators at different levels?

In this session Mieke will share her personal views on what’s needed to work more holistically, outside of our own comfort zones. She'll share her view on how to create the right environment where we look beyond gender, race, and cultural background. Based on a set of personal examples, Mieke will analyse what’s needed both at educational and company level to create a shift in mentality towards more collaboration. It will be a call for more role models to stand-up, male and female, in order to build a better future with AI.