Zero Genie

An Interview with Molly Lavik, Founder of #AIShowBiz Summit and conference participants.

At the beginning of the year, I showcased #AIShowBiz as an example of the AI For Good initiative that described how technologists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are collaborating to solve some of humanity’s most pressing issues. But, like all conferences this year, interrupted by the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the #AIShowBiz Summit 4.0, presented by Lenovo and Intel this year will take place virtually. It seems that the #TechForGOOD theme has captured more sponsors, speakers, judges and investors who want to participate. It will take place virtually online on May 4-6, 2020.

Times are changing, as everyone is home, many of us are looking to be as productive as possible. I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to successfully work from home while shifting my own companies to leverage a distributed workforce. We can collaborate from anywhere. Let’s talk about solutions to collectively heal the world in our ‘new normal’.

As Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Ellen DeGeneres streamed shows that they produced from their living rooms online to entertain everyone, singers such as John Legend, Bono, Chris Martin, Pink, John Mayer, and Keith Urban, and other well-known musicians held virtual concerts. They were all banding together to help raise money for organizations such as CityHarvest that can assist people who are in need during this pandemic.

In the technology community, as the pandemic spread, #TechForGood naturally permeated everyone’s mind. Elon Musk, from Tesla, led the way for large technology companies such as Apple, etc.. to figure out how to source and donate healthcare supplies that hospitals desperately need. Facebook started a hackathon to call on developers to present ideas to help with this pandemic.

Covid-19 pandemic seems to have echoed and amplified the theme of this year’s #AIShowBiz theme: #TechForGood. At the intersection of emerging technology, the technology community and the entertainment community is a tremendous opportunity for the communities to pool together resources to solve some real issues in the world. In other words, united and connected, we can change the world.

We’re convening the greatest minds in Emerging Tech so that we can accelerate the development of innovations to save the world. We are producing this year’s summit to ensure visionary entrepreneurs have the resources they need to bring to life the inventions and technology that could quite literally save humanity at this time.

Remote Conference Can Garner More Support

As everyone mobilized, Molly Lavik, the founder and co-producer and Jannicke Mikkelsen, co-producer and driving creative force for this year’s conference quickly found out that companies didn’t need to be pitched. Everyone wanted to do some good during this crisis. When crises happen simultaneously around the world, to overcome our collective helplessness that we all feel, companies proactively want to help solve some real issues.

Lenovo and Intel decided to sponsor the Summit. Tim Draper, the Founder of Draper Associates and one of the summit’s Trailblazer Talkers saw #TechForGood, as the immediate future for the next few years in emerging technology.

One hidden benefit to the lock down is that people will have time to evaluate new technologies, and the benefits of those technologies. I played an escape room game in VR with my family, for instance. Stepping back from the bustle of the status quo should be a positive sign for bitcoin over banks, for freedom and decentralization over control-based governments, and for using data for diagnostics and therapeutics in health care. Every once in a while, people need to stop and smell the future.

COVID-19 and Healthcare

One of the conference’s unique features aimed at connecting #TechForGood projects with resources is the Mayday Impact Award PitchFest. It’s a pitchfest by emerging technology companies to solve some of our world’s most pressing issues. The Arch Mission Foundation and the Expert DOJO are providing support for this PitchFest. 

The Covid-19 pandemic shed a real light on technologies that are needed in the healthcare community. The Mayday Impact Award PitchFest received innovative entries from technology companies that are creating technologies that can be used during the Covid-19 pandemic. Entries such as the DarwinAI project are trying to help people build AI that they can trust.

We created the COVID-Net, an open source project to try to unite the global research community to accelerate AI for rapid COVID-19 screening.

Judges of the Mayday Impact Award such as Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria who is a Partner in Glocal Healthcare and founded NightHawks, Inc which merged into the largest teleradiology/telemedicine companies in the world saw real opportunities during this pandemic to help to support projects that can make a real impact in healthcare during the Mayday Impact Award PitchFest. 

As a physician and entrepreneur, it is important to me to find solutions that can immediately help prevent mortality and morbidity that viruses and infectious diseases can cause, such as COVID-19. A vaccine platform and widespread testing is especially needed in large populated areas such as India where 1.3 Billion people live in close proximity.

Glocal Healthcare is a leading rural hospital and telemedicine company that has a comprehensive response solution for USA, India, and West Africa that includes self-assessment via travel history and symptoms assessment, and consultations with a qualified doctor to assess if screening or testing is required for COVID-19.

We are investing in a malaria vaccine platform developed by Dr. Jonathan Kurtis at Brown University Medical School which is one of the most exciting vaccine candidates for treating malaria in the world. The malaria vaccine platform is also particularly important in the search for a vaccine against future coronavirus pandemics that threaten humanity. A coronavirus vaccine platform such as this can quickly prevent large scale global deaths and prevent global economic recession.

Covid-19 and Emerging Technology

During this pandemic, everyone all around the world all felt the connection to each other. The feeling of connectedness can help usher us to the new era of Web 3.0. Dan Mapes, the President of Verses Labs, Inc. is also a judge for the Mayday Impact Award PitchFest and summit speaker who has been working on Web 3.0 known as the Spatial Web for the past few years. Verses is a company that creates spatial webs using the XR technology that allows companies, cities, hospitals to manage all of their assets and the connections to their assets.

In a crisis such as the current Covid-19 pandemic, this type of technology can enable companies, hospitals, and cities to mobilize that much more quickly. The global response can also be that much more effective.

The invention of the Internet in 1969 and the World Wide Web in 1994 have been revolutionary. But the best is yet to come. Thanks to advancing chip and network speeds, we can now not only digitize our information into web pages – but we can now digitize our spaces and connect them all into a web of web spaces.

This means that now, we can realize that science fiction dream of digitizing every building, airport, every city and every vehicle – ultimately, the entire planet – and link everything together into a global Spatial Web. The Spatial Web is the next generation of the Web, called Web 3.0, where emerging technologies such as AR, VR, AI, and Blockchain are all integrated with IoT and wearable devices.

This Spatial Web will allow us to move products through supply chains more effectively, manage our hospitals and hospital beds more efficiently, and monitor the health of our citizens in cities and deliver services to them better than ever. XR based web solutions, which we call the Spatial Web, will help us tremendously in crisis circumstances like pandemics. Verses is building out the Spatial Way and testing it today so that it’s ready for the next crisis tomorrow.

Covid-19 and Filmmaking

As filmmakers, artists, entertainers rallied around to help everyone during the Covid-19 crisis, the power of storytelling has been felt around the world to shed light on conditions of healthcare workers, progress in containment, and conditions of people who are recovering from the virus. This type of united effort is giving us glimpses into the virtual reality world when we will all “literally” be connected with one another.

Digital Monarch Media, a division of Unity Technologies, has been working on systems to connect filmmakers, artists, writers, and designers together across the world, removing barriers, and enabling their creative work in virtual space.

We have created tools that are crafted for the way Directors and Cinematographers see the world as well as systems that put entire film crews on a virtual stage, allowing actors, the camera, and the Director the ability to establish a common creative language for the shoot. Above all, while we work in virtual space, with virtual tools, we are dedicated to deconstruct the notion of virtual production. Everything we build is meant to extend the eye and mind of the filmmaker in no more or less of a way that a brush is to the painter’s hand.

Wes Potter is giving a Trailblazer Talk on the pioneering future of cinema and how this type of connection can unleash new possibilities in storytelling.

Covid-19, Climate Crisis and Filmmaking

As we all deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s another urgency that begs us to act. That is the climate change crisis. In some ways, the Covid-19 pandemic is helping all of us understand that we do not live in isolation. The problems affecting one part of the world will inevitably affect other parts of the world. Collaboration across continents, world, and industries is needed to solve humanity’s issues such as the climate change crisis. 

Flying over the North Pole on her most recent aviation mission ’One More Orbit’, Jannicke Mikkelsen, New-Tech Film Director, Co-founder Mayday Impact Award PitchFest and Trailblazer Talker witnessed first-hand the devastating condition of our melting polar ice caps. 

With the help of the latest within satellite and space technology we were able to amplify our message and broadcast live on CNN with Anderson Cooper  to show 55 million viewers the devastating state from this remote part of the planet. Personally I still feel the urgency to act on our climate change crisis. I also especially feel the urgency to act now to combat the coronavirus.

The Silver Lining of the Current Crisis

In some ways, everyone who is going through this time of uncertainty is looking for a silver lining. The real silver lining is that we all felt the connection to one another. Trying to keep this connection going and collaborate to solve some of humanity’s issues going forward will take real strengths.

It’s the type of strengths that the #AIShowbiz is bringing to the table.

We’re calling on all entrepreneurs, inventors and the investors who support them to enter the #AIShowBiz Summit ‘Mayday Impact Award PitchFest’ to gain access to potential resources and visibility to ensure that extraordinary #TechforGOOD inventions ‘see the light of day’ to heal our planet. Together we can accomplish anything we set our minds to, in fact we always have transformed adversity into opportunity when we forge collaborations at this scale.