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I’m at the Govt’s AI Summit, reminiscing about when tech conferences had people with purple hair & big ideas Overheard conversations between grey suited people this morning are how backs are holding up after multi-hop trips from Bxl, & the €900 someone paid Ryanair to get here

There is a smoke machine, but shoes are shiny but sensible, the handbags are YSL, a man refuses to move a can of redbull to let a person on crutches sit down, the Taoiseach walks in and takes his seat and no one notices.

Martin kicks us off, after a Riverdance-esque drum & dance show to the recorded tones of Bono

Virkkunen ends her speech, mostly about how the EU will be an “AI Continent” with a reference to Sean’s Heaney’s Digging, saying every generation has its instrument - and maybe our pen / shovel is AI Our culture is really being mined here today Her speech ends and she and An Taoiseach flee

Google’s Demis Hassabis “Our AI systems are good at solving problems, but it’s up to the scientists and artists to pose the questions”

Mairead McGuinness, until recently the VP of the European Parliament, asks Siemens if we can have good governance of AI He responds by talking about his recent trip to Abu Dhabi and what the AI Minister there is doing, and how far behind the US we are

Meta let you try on The Glasses (clunky yet also flimsy), Google have a bike to nowhere & theres 1 robot Merch situation is dire - Nvidia have poor quality totes no one wants, and there’s some pens “Maybe they’re worried about gifting rules” someone opines