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The AI landscape continues to change rapidly with the DeepSeek whale ushering in warnings of a dot-com-style bubble and calls to portfolio managers to diversify, diversify, diversify in and around the tech sector. As Charlie Wells writes for Bloomberg of the recent market moves following the DeepSeek announcement:
“The selloff was a potent reminder of how concentrated markets have become around a small cadre of tech stocks and how important it is to be diversified. In fact, the leading stocks of the S&P 500 haven't been as concentrated as they are now since the run-up to the dot-com bubble at the end of the 1990s.”
Meanwhile, the job market conversation is shifting from “how do I learn prompt engineering” to “show me your AI agent”, and coding tests come with clever tricks to catch applicants using AI to source their answers. Meanwhile, the AI research community is booming. Model training costs are coming down (and have been since before DeepSeek). The field is moving too fast on too many levels for any one person to keep up with everything … *gasp*...
So, here in Medellin, Colombia, I’m munching on a mind-meltingly delicious pastry wondering: how do I even begin to lead a conversation on AI today – not to mention two.
The City of Eternal Spring is host to The Festival of the Diaspora this month – an event that “celebrates the essence of humanity and brings together diaspora leaders from the 35 countries of the Americas.” This geopolitical and technological environment surrounding this year’s Festival is very different from that of the previous year. This year’s festival is happening in the wake of an historic number of elections around the world, which changed the political landscape dramatically. The ripple effects of these elections are starting to make themselves known in the global markets too. The fundraising playbook – from venture capital to philanthropy to retail investing (yes, crypto too) – is being rewritten. The noise decibel heading into 2025 is high, and conferences like these are an opportunity to begin to distill a bit of signal.
This year, I’ll be moderating a panel and a workshop. The workshop, “Designing and Building Technological Systems for a Fully Inclusive Society”, will explore how we got to where we are in tech – both the progress that has been made to bring more diverse talent into the space and the work that still needs to be done in helping everyone feel they can truly belong and participate in the tech sector’s fast-paced evolution. We’ll focus primarily on the role of technology in advancing fair access to housing, and I’ll be joined by Lisa Rice, President and CEO, National Fair Housing Alliance, Julia Gordon, Fmr. Commissioner of the United States Federal Housing Administration, and Dr. Michael Akinwumi, Chief Responsible AI Officer, National Fair Housing Alliance.
The panel discussion will address “AI's Role in Visionary Projects”. My goal with this panel, as with most conversations I have on AI, is to focus on the tactical and the practical: what can be done with this technology and how, specifically, do you do it while navigating the risks? I’ll be joined by Hector Mujica, Head of Americas Philanthropy at Google.org, Riva Kajangu, Product Manager at McKinsey, and Amnahir Peña-Alcántara, White House Fellow at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
One of the persistent blindspots of the AI conversation is what members of the Diaspora have to contribute outside of simply discussing diversity, equity, and inclusion. Both the panel and the workshop I’ll be moderating are an opportunity for me to zoom out, take stock, and hear voices I don’t often get to hear in day-to-day coverage of AI and tech – from sectors both very close to the epicenter of the AI boom and those that are at least perceived to be further away.
Just like any other population, the perspectives within the Diaspora on the development, use, security, and efficiency of new technologies are useful and vast. That’s why I come to the Festival of the Diaspora. The organizers of this conference are leveraging the best kept secret in AI, which is that these voices are necessary and important to everyone's collective progress. They know that no matter how fast technology, society, money, and politics change, if you bring a smart group of people who are traditionally overlooked together outside of their day-to-day work and commitments and into a space where they can explore both commonality and difference in this and other fast-moving spaces, you can generate incredible, long-lasting value.
