By Prakash Narayan–
(Prakash Narayan is chief technology officer at 3K Technologies)
The 2024 TiEcon conference was held at the Santa Clara Convention Center on May 1st 2nd and 3rd. The theme for TiEcon was Ubiquitous AI – highlighting the transformative power of AI. There were over 150 speakers and almost every one of them wove the theme of AI in their narrative. Due to editorial constraints, this article does not cover every session / keynote at TiEcon. It does, however, attempt to capture some of the highlights.
The Startup bootcamp and AI bootcamps on the first day were completely sold out. The opening grand keynote was delivered by Jay Chaudhry, Chairman and Founder of Zscaler. Jay shared six lessons that he had learned through his entrepreneurial journey:
- Disruptive vs Incremental – it is the mega shifts that create new market leaders
- All about the team – look for hungry, rising stars who have the spark in them
- Culture is critical – leadership behavior drives the culture. Being execution focused in key
- Sales and marketing are keys to success – customer and growth obsession are essential ingredients
- CEOs: The buck stops with you – constantly evaluate what the business needs to succeed
- Raising money vs selling the company – don’t take short cuts and focus on building a lasting company
Jay invited the CIO of Zscaler, Praniti Lakhwana on stage to reinforce his management lessons – that he walks the talk.
The opening day also saw a track on Exponential India. The track was chaired by Asha Jadeja Motwani. The panel discussion on a New Global India had Dr. Mukesh Aghi, President and CEO of USISPF; J Sai Deepak, Advocate at Supreme Court of India; Prashant Gulati, Founder of SmartStart Fund; and Satyan Gajwani, Vice Chairman of Times Internet. The panel discussed the rise of India in Defense Tech, Social Media Tech and AI Tech. The Indian economy is at $4T – which is just 3% of the Global GDP of $105T. There is a need for a closer collaboration and cooperation between US and India. The US-India commerce is at $200b. The Indian diaspora the US have $170k spending power vs $75k among the others. The opportunity for India is far beyond the boundary.
Globally, the “India Way” is being recognized as education-oriented, honest, non-troublemakers. Today, most people in India are comfortable in their own skin. Rural India is embracing technology and there are many startups coming up in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. All this bodes well for India in the coming years. There is a need for a Capital Expenditure of $3T to grow the infrastructure in India. A lot of this money is coming from Japan and the Middle East.
The Grand Keynote on Day 2 was a fireside chat between Naveen Chaddha, Managing Partner of Mayfield Fund and Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA.
Jensen talked about the fourth industrial revolution that we are currently experiencing where intelligence is being delivered at scale. NVIDIA is providing the cognitive plumbing to enable this revolution.
Naveen steered the conversation to focus more on Jensen’s leadership style and his core values. When asked about how he tackles seemingly insurmountable problems with aplomb, Jensen responded by saying, “There is a superpower in ignorance. So, I jump in asking myself how hard can it be?”
When asked what keeps him going, Jensen said, “I don’t know what else I will do. I derive immense joy in working with amazing people.”
Sumit Sadana, EVP and Chief Business Officer at Micron Technology gave another Grand Keynote on “Memory – Unleashing the Potential of AI” on Day 2.
He said breakthrough in AI capabilities will revolutionize every aspect of human life.
He spoke about the status quo in AI being ANI – or Artificial Narrow Intelligence: which is limited to a specific field. Machine learning, recommender systems, computer vision, natural language processing, facial recognition are all examples of ANI.
When you add GenAI and another 5 years to ANI, we get AGI – or Artificial General Intelligence. Here, we get broad, human-like intelligence. We get reasoning capabilities and intuition. The system is also able to do psychological and emotional understanding.
Adding 10 years to AGI, we get ASI – or Artificial Super Intelligence. Here we far surpass humans in all capabilities linked to Intelligence. The system is Self-aware. All the cumulative wisdom of humanity can be found in a Data Center.
There are 100b neurons in the brain that have a 100T connections. Today, we are at 1% of the number of connections that the brain makes.
The other Entrepreneur Programs at TiEcon: MentorConnect and VC Connect were also at capacity. Over 300 mentees participated in MentorConnect over two days while VC connect provided the opportunity to over 120 entrepreneurs to connect with over 25 VCs.
MentorConnect session in progress
VC Connect session in progress
TiE50, as always, attracted a large number of submissions from early to mid-stage startups. The top 50 startups got to pitch in front of a live panel of judges all day on Thursday, May 2nd. In addition, 10 startups got to pitch to Meet the Drapers.
Dr. Ramesh Raskar, Professor at MIT Media Lab, delivered the Keynote in the Healthcare track on Day 3. He shared his insights about the future of healthcare in
decentralized AI with each patient owning their personal data. He urged the audience to spot unique problems and probe solutions efficiently. The moat is the strongest when building Dimensional AI that requires multi-dimensional efforts but captures enduring values.
To unlock the true power of AI, we need a new paradigm: decentralized AI – since centralized models (ChatGPT is an example) are reaching their limits. The challenges of centralized AI include limited data access, one-size-fits-all models and lack of transparency and accountability.
Decentralized AI, on the other hand, will have secure data marketplaces to enable data exchange while protecting privacy. There will be multi-dimensional models and the AI will learn from real-world experiences through simulations. The AI will be verifiable with mechanisms like blockchain to ensure responsible development and deployment of AI models. We can thus have exchanges for AI solutions – to allow people to access and contribute to AI solutions for a diverse set of needs.
Decentralized AI goes beyond a technological leap. It is a societal shift where individuals feel empowered, and innovation gets unlocked.
He narrated an anecdote where he set up a “Talk to God” phone booth at Burning Man (in Black Rock Desert, Nevada). People would step into the booth and share their innermost private details to the voice on the other end with the goal of getting answers to their problems. In real life, we all do this on a daily basis. We share our (private) location information with Google (God) with the goal of navigating to our destination without encountering too much traffic. In other words, if the incentive is high, then a compromise on privacy is acceptable.
While Software is wisdom from Rules (Cooking is an example), AI is wisdom from examples (Raising a child is an example)
Overall, TiEcon 2024 had really good content in each track. It would certainly be worthwhile reviewing the videos once they get posted in TiE Silicon Valley’s YouTube channel. Kudos to TiE Silicon Valley President, Anita Manwani; the TiEcon 2024 conveners Surbhi Kaul and Sandeep Bhat and all the Track Chairs for yet another excellent conference.
