We love AI here at Oveit. We see great potential in using Artificial Intelligence to solve real-world problems. That’s why we have set up a special program for AI event organizers (basically free Oveit usage for AI events).

But we went a little further. We wanted to know what makes a great AI event great. So our data science team did a little data digging and here’s what we found:

AI is already a global phenomenon. AI events are popping all over the world

We used Facebook’s events API to search for the most popular AI events and the things we’ve found are astonishing. You would expect AI events to show up in hi-tech areas, and they do. But they also show up in parts of the world where you would really not expect.

For example, the data gathered between the 10th and 14th of September shows the most popular AI event was hosted in Lima, Peru, followed by an event in Vilnius, Lithuania. And this brings us to our …

Top 10 most popular AI events

We selected the most interesting AI events and decided to see which is more popular, in terms of people attending.

Here is our top 10:

10. Artificial Intelligence with McKinsey & Company is presented by McKinsey and NOVA Aarhaus University and features topics such as processing natural language, recognizing patterns, and decision-making.

9. Startup Weekend Artificial Intelligence Mexico City, organized by TechStars’ Startup Weekend community. You will notice that this is not the only Startup Weekend entry in this list which goes to show just how influential TechStars is in the growing AI startups community.

8. The Artificial Intelligence Conference SF, organized by O’Reilly Media. An awesome line up of AI scientists, startup owners, and VC’s. This conference is the perfect mashup of technology, science, and startups, in the best spot on the planet for innovation to develop: San Francisco.

7. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence is an event organized by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge. Yes, you’ve read that right: Study of Existential Risk. The topics are covered by Max Erik Tegmark, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute.

Now, this is where things get really interesting. The Future of Life Institute was co-founded by prof. Max Erik Tegmark. However, the institute lists among its scientific advisory board some well-known people: Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Stuard Russell and yes… that is right: Morgan Freeman and Alan Alda. Definitely worth attending.

6. Bayesian Networks—Artificial Intelligence for Research was an event organized in San Francisco by the great people at BayesiaLab. The free seminar focused on using bayesian networks for aspects where data is scarce. Unlike Deep Learning and other machine learning techniques, bayesian networks can work great with “Small(er) Data”. It seems the event caught the attention of its intended audience: Bioinformaticians, biostatisticians, clinical scientists, computer scientists, data scientists, decision scientists, demographers, ecologists, econometricians, economists, epidemiologists, knowledge managers, management scientists, market researchers, marketing scientists, operations research analysts, policy analysts, predictive modelers, research investigators, risk managers, social scientists, statisticians, plus students and teachers of related fields.

5. Scientific Controversies No. 12: Artificial Intelligence was hosted by Pioneer Works, ‘a cultural center dedicated to experimentation, education, and production across disciplines’, in Brooklyn, US. The topics discussed were machine consciousness, willfulness and whether when such aspects arise would we be able to understand the newly silicon sentient beings. Pioneer Works Director of Sciences Janna Levin invited Yann LeCun, Director of AI research at Facebook and NYU professor, and Max Tegmark, Director of the Future of Life Institute and MIT professor to discuss these topics.

4. Startup Weekend Montreal – Artificial Intelligence – a Startup Weekend / Techstars event that gathers the AI focused community in Montreal. As stated by the event organizers: “Startup Weekend is a 54-hour competition designed to provide an amazing experiential learning opportunity for AI enthusiasts, developers, designers, and business-minded individuals to come together to create a business.”

3. LDN Talks The Future of Artificial Intelligence, hosted by Prof. Nick Jennings, Vice-Provost (Research) and Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London. The event tackled the topic of computers and humans working together, especially now as computers are able to manage ever more complex tasks, due to new advancements in AI and hardware.

2. Artificial Intelligence Group Meetup happens in Vilnius, Lithuania and is powered by Rise Vilnius, a tech hub with offices all over the world, together with Baltijos pažangių technologijų institutas. The great guys at Rise Vilnius were kind enough to post a video on this first meetup, for those not able to make it to the meetup:

1: Startup Weekend Artificial Intelligence Lima – a startup event focused on AI, organized by StartupWeekend in Peru, which is itself powered by TechStars, a worldwide network of tech entrepreneurs. More info and registration options on the event can be found on the event’s website.

What are the hottest topics around AI events?

So you’ve seen the hottest events right now. But how about the topics discussed within these events? Well, we did a little more research and searched for the hot buzzwords and the most interesting topics discussed. Here’s what we’ve found:

The most important topics discussed within AI events: