We can today unveil our lineup going head to head for The Great DebAIt, our showcase of provocative, big-picture thinking to end our AI conference HumAIn.
The proposition for this year’s Great DebAIt is “AI is the news media’s extinction-level event.”
Each speaker has four minutes to make their case, with the audience casting a vote before and after the presentations. Can our debAIters change hearts and minds?
The affirmative team includes Karen Powell, CEO of Omnipresence; John Cucka, head of Kantar Analytics Australia, and Jessie Hughes, senior creative technologist at Leonardo.ai.
Powell advises B2B leaders on AI technology integration with a focus on revenue. A Global AI Council member, her background includes leadership roles at Bastion and McCorkell & Associates.
Cucka specializes in quantitative models for marketing decision-making. He brings over 30 years of experience in data science, AI, and statistics.
And along with her work at AI image generation startup Leonardo.ai, Hughes is an internationally recognised new media artist. Her work, exploring emerging technologies, has been showcased at Sundance, SXSW, and the Tate Modern.
And opposing the motion, arguing that AI is not media’s extinction-level event are futurist Ross Dawson, Tom Robinson, CEO of Edelman Australia, and Scott Purcell, co-founder, Man of Many.
Dawson may be best known for his Newspaper Extinction Timeline which charted the decline of traditional print newspapers. Written in 2010, Dawson predicted that newspapers in their current form would become insignificant in Australia by 2022. Dawson runs the AI + Humans Explorer community.
Robinson oversees Edelman’s Trust Barometer, research into public trust and sentiment towards businesses and institutions published annually. This year’s report, entitled Innovation in Peril, found that 53% of Australians reject AI, and believe innovation is being mismanaged.
Purcell’s publication Man of Many claims to have a nuanced approach to AI, leveraging its capabilities to augment the editorial processes while rejecting fully AI-generated content.
HumAIn takes place in Sydney on May 28. Tickets, and details of the full conference lineup are now available.
28 May 2024 | Surry Hills, Sydney