Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre was a hive of activities of a different sort as more than 700 technologists from 21 countries converged for EmTech Asia on January 30 and 31.
Organised by MIT Technology Review and Koelnmesse, the event featured an impressive line-up of speakers covering artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, automation, future cities, space and aerospace innovation, augmented and virtual reality, and bioengineering.
Based on the theme Where Technology, Business and Innovation Collide, the speakers include Bill Dally, Chief Scientist, NVIDIA; Serguei Beloussov, Chairman and CEO, Acronis; Paul Smith, Global Field Operations Manager, Hyperloop One; Shana Diez, Director of Build Reliability, SpaceX; Tomaso Poggio, Eugene McDermott Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT; Tong Zhang, Executive Director, Tencent AI Lab and Jun Rekimoto, Deputy Director, Sony Computer Science Laboratories.
In his presentation on Fueling the AI revolution, Dally assured the audience that AI doesn’t replace humans. “It empowers them, freeing humans for more creative things,” he said.
Singapore is pushing strongly in its research and development efforts and building a pool of research talents with initiatives such as SGInnovate.
“Singapore is fully committed to develop a conducive ecosystem for innovators to work together through events like EmTech Asia to foster the exchange of ideas. We also develop initiatives for experimentation such as regulatory sandboxes, to provide innovators with a great space to work on next generation challenges,” said Zee Kin Yeong, Assistant Chief Executive, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Host Partner of EmTech Asia.
“In the five years since it was first held in Singapore, EmTech Asia has been a showcase for amazing scientific research in a variety of fields. We know Singapore has world-class research underway, but we want to see more of that research become productised and commercialised,” said Steve Leonard, Founding CEO, SGInnovate and Disruptive Innovation Partner of EmTech Asia.
Entelechy Asia 