The itinerary for the inaugural AI Horizons Summit has been unveiled, including names of some of the biggest companies in tech in Pittsburgh and beyond.
The event, which is set to take place on Oct. 14 at Bakery Square, will feature a main stage that will seat approximately 450 attendees and will house the two main sessions of the day. The opening keynote is set to feature Gov. Josh Shapiro and a closing keynote will feature Stanford Research Institute Director of AI Karen Myers and CMU Machine Learning Department Director and OpenAI Board Member Zico Kolter, who ascended to the influential board seat last month.
Between the two keynotes, nine breakout sessions will occur simultaneously, several of which feature representatives from major companies in the space. One session will feature Shane Shaneman, senior AI strategist at Nvidia, another will feature Google Gemini AI Product Lead Jack Krawczyk alongside Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, while another will feature Klinton Bicknell, Duolingo's head of AI.
Google is also one of two lead sponsors for the event, alongside BNY. The search engine has operated office space in Bakery Square since 2009 and has been credited by developers Walnut Capital as kickstarting the area's push to house tech and AI companies, which has been dubbed AI Avenue. The event itself is sponsored by the AI Avenue Working Group, a consortium of local leaders seeking to "elevate Pittsburgh as a global powerhouse in AI innovation."
"Our region has everything it takes to lead the global AI revolution, but the missing piece has been a unified strategy to bring all the key players together," Joanna Doven, strategy consultant leading the AI Avenue Working Group, said in a prepared statement. "This summit is the reset we need, with the region's economic future at stake. The energy sparked here will drive policies, actions and storytelling that will grow Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania's economy, jobs and communities."
Doven also teased that "the overwhelming response from industry and civic leadership has led us to consider extending the event to two days."
