Virtual Summit
21st April 2021
9:00
Summit Opening Address

Sarah Murphy
Managing Director, iQuest & Business Post LIVE
9:05
Welcome from the Chair

Dr. Ruth Freeman
Director of Science for Society, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)
9:10
Government Address:
National Artificial Intelligence Strategy
Minister Troy will speak about the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, which will be launched this year.AI is a disruptive technology which will play a major role in shaping economies and societies across the world over the coming decades, granting early adopters significant societal, economic and strategic advantages.The strategy will be a roadmap to how Ireland can harness the transformative potential of AI for unlocking productivity, for addressing societal challenges and for delivering public services. Government’s vision for AI is that Ireland will be an international leader in using AI to the benefit of our population, through a people centred, ethical approach to AI development, adoption and use.

Robert Troy TD
Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation
9:20
OPENING KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
AI In Ireland: An International Comparison
Ireland has a long history of leadership in several sub-fields of artificial intelligence. Ireland is also home to many of the major tech companies seen as leading innovators in the field internationally. In this keynote address, Professor O’Sullivan will present a comparison with a number of countries in terms of investment, uptake, and other structures, as they relate to maximising the benefits of AI and will identify opportunities and threats for Ireland.

Prof. Barry O’Sullivan
School of Computer Science & IT and the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, University College Cork
9:40
PANEL DISCUSSION:
Where to start to capitalise on the AI opportunity?
Despite AI being huge for Ireland, knowing where to start can be a complex and daunting task. This interactive panel ask how AI can be simplified to create your business case, which steps to take at the journey’s start and which organisational cultures and structures are most beneficial for AI. You’ll also learn which organisations you should collaborate with, how to access funding effectively and which mistakes you need to avoid to reduce your AI risk.

Dr. Gavin Shorten
IBM Ireland Lab Innovation Program Leader

Fintan O'Malley
Director of Research, Development & Innovation, Fidelity Investments

Clare Conran
(Interim) Head of Design & Innovation, ADAPT Centre

Dr. Steve Flinter
Vice President, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Mastercard Labs R&D
10:10
International Keynote Interview:
Placing Ethics, Trust, Transparency & Explainability At The Heart Of Your AI Strategy
This crucial session asks which key ethical considerations should feature within every AI strategy, how you can create a culture of trust around your AI initiatives and what effective transparency, explainability and acceptability should look and feel like. You will also learn about the role of regulation vs voluntary transparency and the key pitfalls to avoid within ethics, trust, transparency and explainability.

Hubert Etienne
Philosopher Professor & Lecturer specialised in AI Ethics, Facebook AI and Ecole Normale Supérieure
10:25
Networking Break
10:35
INTERNATIONAL CASE STUDY:
COVID-19 Vaccines: Natural Language Processing For Adverse Event Detection
Adverse events are among the main causes of hospitalization and death in the world. Pharmacovigilance plays, therefore, a crucial role in monitoring the drugs released in the market to minimize harm to patients. In this talk, Enrico will present an Adverse Event Detection system which exploits state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing to automate the identification of side effects about COVID-19 vaccines in tweets. The system was ranked at the top of the ‘Social Media Mining for Health’ (SMM4H) shared task leaderboard and won the IBM best short paper at the Workshop on Pharma and Healthcare Intelligence (W3PHIAI).

Enrico Santus
Senior Data Scientist, Bayer Pharmaceuticals
10:55
PANEL DISCUSSION:
Rethinking Talent To Thrive In An Agile AI World
This panel asks how AI is impacting the Irish job market, how we can make Ireland a recruitment magnet for overseas AI-skilled executives and how we can rethink education and training of the Irish workforce to capitalise on the AI opportunity. You will also learn about new job roles AI is creating, which skills are best to outsource and how we can attract more women into AI-related roles.

Dr. Begüm Genç
Post-Doctoral Researcher, Confirm Centre, CSIT, UCC and Cork City Ambassador, Women in AI

Mark Jordan
Chief Technologist, Skillnet Ireland

Kevin Quinlan
Lead Data Scientist, ESB Networks

Graham Baitson
Global Lead of Innovation, McKesson
11:25
CASE STUDY:
Understanding The Impact of 5G On Enhancing The Artificial Intelligence Opportunity
IBM and Glanbia will discuss the impact of 5G in enhancing the AI business opportunity by drawing on a shared experience as partners in a collaborative 5G innovation project. A project targeted at leveraging 5G and AI technologies to solve complex real-world use cases across industry and business verticals. The session will explore the symbiotic relationship that now exists between AI, 5G, and IoT technologies, as well as, covering the role of AI in support of 5G. IBM and Glanbia will also share insights and first-hand experience on some of the typical challenges that organisations face when adopting AI, as well as, exploring why some organisations have not yet adopted AI..

Michael Power
Global MES Manager, Glanbia Plc

Ryan Gallagher
Innovation Program Leader, IBM Innovation Exchange
11:45
Networking Break
11:55
PRESENTATION:
Artificial Intelligence For Gender Equality
Until now, efforts done within the area of AI and gender equality have primarily focused on challenges linked to the underrepresentation of women working in AI and gender-related bias in machine learning starting with biased datasets. Nowadays, we have many examples of how AI maintains, strengthens, and reproduces inequality. It is crucial to investigate the root cause resulting in unfairness. The reason why certain technologies systematically don’t work for certain groups of people is a multi-faceted problem, having both social and technical explanations, and must undoubtedly be addressed from a transdisciplinary perspective. This presentation will address five specific inequality areas, in accordance with the United Nations framework, to shed light on new perspectives towards the overall topic of gender equality and inclusion.

Alessandra Sala
Director of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Shutterstock
12:15
Lunch
12:40
Welcome back from the Chair

Dr. Ruth Freeman
Director of Science for Society, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)
12:45
AFTERNOON KEYNOTE:
AI – The next frontier for healthcare transformation
Healthcare is embarking on a journey to digital transformation. In Ireland we are in the early stages of this transformation but are laying the foundations for the next frontier of advancement, Artificial Intelligence. The presentation will share Covid 19 triggers for digital transformation which are creating the platform for AI deployment and use in Ireland. New AI usage models are also discussed.

Prof. Martin Curley
Director, Digital Transformation and Open Innovation, Health Service Executive (HSE)
1:05
PRESENTATION:
Ensuring Compliance With Current EU Law And Policy And Preparing For Regulatory Change
This session is designed to help you ensure your AI initiatives align with EU law and policy. We will look at how to apply AI within the current EU regulatory framework and also assess regulatory changes that are coming down the track to ensure you have a clear roadmap and are best prepared.

Dr Maria Helen Murphy
Assistant Professor in Law, Maynooth University Department of Law
1:25
INTERNATIONAL GUESTS PANEL DISCUSSION:
Incorporating lessons learnt from implementations across industry
This closing panel asks which AI applications have delivered the most success and ROI, which key elements define the process of successful implementation, as well as what successful change management looks like within AI implementation. It will also examine crucial data management considerations, which costly implementation mistakes to avoid and how to monitor and measure success within your AI implementation.

Simon Rost
Marketing Executive, Digital Health & Artificial Intelligence Portfolio, GE Healthcare

Emma Strömfelt
Chief Digital Officer, AniCura Group

Zachary Hanif
Senior Director of Machine Learning, Capital One
1:55
Closing remarks & Summit close

Dr. Ruth Freeman
Director of Science for Society, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)