Tampa Bay Tech's annual PoweredUP Tech Festival May 22 in St. Petersburg brought a crowd looking to connect.
The day-long event at the Mahaffey Theater featured networking and several panels discussing tech nationally and regionally. The central theme was how artificial intelligence is an urgent topic for leaders as it creeps into business practices at every level.
Tampa Bay Tech is one of the region's oldest nonprofits focused on tech. It aims to connect Tampa Bay's tech ecosystem through programming and memberships. It has held the event annually for several years. Tampa Bay Inno pulled together a few takeaways from the event.
AI isn't eating the world
Igor Jablokov considers himself an AI viking.
Jablokov, the CEO of AI startup Pryon, has studied AI technology since starting his career at IBM, where he later became a director. He went on to launch Yap, the startup behind the central technology powering Amazon's Alexa. He has worked in the space for so long that he's part of its ancient history, he said on stage in his keynote speech.
That time in the field has developed his outlook on AI. He disagrees with the belief that AI is an enabler in software's domination in all industries. He referred to the phrase that describes AI as the teeth in the popular metaphor of "software eating the world," coined by investor Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest venture capital firms in the region.
Early AI technologists considered it the heart, he said — an energy-pumping mechanism quietly working to power the world. It would enable people and bridge divides. That's the vision of AI that started his interest in the industry. Today, it's similar to his vision to fuel his startup, Pryon, which focuses on safety and functionality.
Bay Care's eat-on-the-go with AI
In April, Tampa-based health system BayCare joined innovative companies investing in "just walk out" tech. At BayCare's St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, a checkout-free cafeteria is now open all day and night, daily. A complex system of digital payment entryways, AI and camera monitors enables customers to shop. Customers pay simply by exiting the cafeteria with their items.
Andrew Maksimovich, an Amazon business development manager, said in his presentation that "just walk out" technology is growing in popularity and holds the potential to be widely adopted.
But perfecting it hasn't been easy. The trick was focusing first on the most challenging issues, Maksimovich said. Today, the tech still has kinks, and in April, the technology was removed from its Amazon Fresh grocery stores.
"It was critically important that these grocery stores should serve an important purpose in incubating a lot of features and a lot of capabilities, which you'll see in the next evolution of our business that led to the story that BayCare bought," Maksimovich said.
Applying AI
In a panel about navigating AI, leaders from across fields broke down the potential they see for integrating AI technologies into the workplace. Ken Pomella, the CEO of Tampa software firm Revstar, shared a memory about an unnamed CEO in his 60s who whispered to Pomella at a Christmas party that he "needed AI."
It was a funny anecdote, but it represented how finding the right solution is an important part of the AI question, he said.
"Make sure you're doing due diligence on what you're looking at, that you're working with a good partner and there's enough information to make an intelligent decision about if you actually need to go down the path of implementing AI or more of a basic workflow solution," Pomella said.
Ryan Schmeidl, a managing director and general manager at JP Morgan, said he uses an analogy from the Discovery Channel show called "Gold Rush."
"The successful guys always core sample before they dig to figure if there's gold there," Schmeidl said. "It's the same context [with AI] — sample and understand what you're doing before you make a big investment decision."
