Professionals Discuss the Future of AI at bitgrit’s World Data Science Forum
Last Saturday, we hosted our signature event, the World Data Science Forum (WDSF), in Malaysia for the first time. Previous iterations of the WDSF have been held around the world in India, Japan, and the U.A.E.
The day-long event was sponsored by Matrix AI and hosted by bitgrit. Matrix AI is a China-based firm that leverages the latest AI technology to deliver on the promise of blockchain. We also partnered with MIMOS Berhad, Asia Pacific University, and the University of Kuala Lumpur to deliver a memorable event.
The WDSF was held on October 5 at the prestigious Asia Pacific University campus in Kuala Lumpur, and we saw a full house with 170 attendees from several disciplines including business, education, and, of course — technology.
What made this WDSF special
Aside from this being our first time holding the WDSF in Malaysia, we had an incredible team of hard-working student volunteer Campus Ambassadors helping us in organizing and supporting the event. One of our star Campus Ambassadors is a recent graduate of APU herself, Ain Najwa Arbain, who acted as Master of Ceremonies to introduce all of our incredible speakers.
We’ve learned so much from each previous WDSF that this edition ran more smoothly, saw a greater turnout, and had more speakers than any past WDSF. And we couldn’t have done it without our incredible Campus Ambassadors, guest speakers, and APU campus organizers.
Morning speeches — from data explosion to the morality of AI
We hit off the event with an opening speech by our very special guest, the Senior Principal Assistant Director of the Department of Higher Education at the Ministry of Education Malaysia, Dr. Nur Aida Binti Kipli.
Our Keynote Speaker for the event was the esteemed Dr. Ong Hong Hoe, Senior Director at MIMOS Berhad, who spoke on a hot topic in Malaysia right now — the 4th Industrial Revolution. He also shared insights on the overall theme of this WDSF, “The Future of AI in Asia,” wrapping up with an explanation of the two prevalent and opposing modes of thought regarding AI’s future: that robots will take over and steal our jobs, or that humans are in charge and there’s nothing to worry about. This debate would come up again later in our afternoon panel discussion.
The next speech was by Co-Founder and Managing Partner at RHL Ventures, Raja Hamzah. He shared insights on the startup world in Southeast Asia, including its bright future, vibrant ecosystem, and strong funding flows. Following his speech was Bhupendra Mishra, Consulting Solution Lead at ASEAN in Big Data & Analytics, who spoke about data and AI, sharing with the crowd that the International Data Corporation predicts an explosion of data to 163 zettabytes by the year 2025.
The last speech was by esteemed University of Kuala Lumpur professor Dr. Eiad Yafi, who shared fascinating findings about philosophical thought experiment “the trolley problem” and its implications for AI used for self-driving cars.
An afternoon panel discussion that sparked debate about the future of AI
After a break for lunch, networking, and prayer, we returned to the lecture hall where Campus Ambassador Ain Najwa Arbain led a thought-provoking panel discussion with leaders from the corporate, entrepreneurial, media, and education fields.
During the panel discussion, a debate sparked about AI’s implications for the future — particularly, whether AI will replace jobs and to what degree. AI Engineer at WISE AI Leong Lai Fong argued that AI will replace menial work that humans don’t really want to do anyway, whereas Founder of Wonderland Technologies Homam Alghorani claimed that AI is and will continue to take over jobs completely.
Manminder Kaur, Founder & CEO of Supernewsroom and Intelectasia provided valuable insights on the implementation of AI in media, including how deep learning is used to pick up keywords to target the right journalists for a story pitch. Professor Dr. Ir. Ts. Vinesh Thiruchelvam, Deputy Vice Chancellor & Chief Innovation Officer at Asia Pacific University explained further use cases in the education field, including how predictive models can be used to estimate class sizes and matriculation rates.
To wrap up the WDSF, bitgrit CEO Frederik Bussler introduced bitgrit’s AI competition platform as a helpful tool that students can use to get the hands-on experience necessary to boost their resumes, emphasizing that a degree alone isn’t guaranteed to land a job anymore. We also teased our next competition that’s scheduled to start this November; if you’re interested to know more, please subscribe to our publication to get that update as soon as we post it.
From the debates surrounding the future of AI to the in-depth insights on its various applications, this WDSF was certainly our best one yet, and we look forward to continue hosting them in locations around the world. And if we get the chance to come back to Malaysia, we’re excited to follow up on the subjects discussed in this edition and have an even better idea of what AI has to offer in the future.
