AI connecting people

Well, that's probably not the first idea to come into mind, is it?

At our conference Vision25: AI Everything Everywhere All at Once last Friday, that was one of the highlights. There were people from business, government and state institutions, startups, researchers and academics. All together, connected around AI.

Milan Gospic from 微软 kickstarted the conference with his business keynote. Milan's down to earth approach to AI underlined importance of experimentation with AI as a general purpose technology. We also learned about key data from Microsoft and LinkedIn 2024 Work Trend Index on the state of AI at work.

To have a national perspective of AI infrastructure and planning, Bogdan Stesevic from Kancelarija za IT i eUpravu gave a public policy keynote. We learned about the national supercomputers, their power, but also their availability to startups and research community. It was great to hear the country had ambitious plans in investing and leading the AI transformation.

In a Fireside chat AI for Business &?Innovation, Milo? Bo?ovi?, full professor at Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade highlighted the economical aspects of AI transformation and the specifics of our national economy. Predrag Spasojevic, CEO at HOOLOOVOO, shared his views on how AI impacts IT businesses and his company is leading AI transformation alongside building AI products and services. Dejan Grubisic from Serbian AI Society discussed current technological developments in AI. Finally, Milena Kostadinovic highlighted how Fond za inovacionu delatnost is supporting local AI startups and businesses.

In the AI Innovation Showcase, Ivan Ilin demoed iki.ai , an innovative tool for organizing and storing personal or organizational knowledge. Dragan Gasevic , distinguished professor at 澳大利亚蒙纳士大学 , shared his recent research in Nature Magazine on AI and learning. Dragan talked about the importance of metacognition in collaborating with AI. Dragan highlighted how metacognition should be embedded in designing human-AI interactions, which makes a crucial distinction between AI making us smarter vs. AI making us more lazy as passive recipients of AI generated content. We had great the pleasure welcoming Natalia Fedorova from Toloka , who shared her research on AI personalities and how companies can leverage the opportunity for modulating their AI agents in line with specific Big Five Personality traits. Natalia showcased new skillset of psychologists as a profession, which dives into the subtleties of human-AI collaboration.

One of the Vision25 highlights was the International Coaching Federation keynote by Joel DiGirolamo , VP of Research & Data Science. Joel was talking about how AI is reshaping team diagnostics, coaching aids, and how it is blending into different L&D modalities. Joel also shared his perspective on AI in Coaching standards and how they are helping various stakeholders. It was a huge privilege having Joel's perspective as we see International Coaching Federation leading the way in AI integrations into coaching.

Kou?ing centar , as the event host, had the pleasure to talk about Coachia, our internally built AI System for human skills development, that showcases various AI L&D agents, such as AI Tutors, AI Simulators, AI Reflection Buddies, AI Mentors etc. In line with Dragan Gasevic 's emphasis on metacognition, we are building Coachia to support active engagement and proactive user centered approach in interacting with the app. We wrote about some of these in our paper on AI metacogniton in coaching tasks. The project is financed by the Innovation Fund from the European Union Pre-Accession Assistance and from the budget of the Republic of Serbia, the line of Ministry Science,Technological Development аnd Innovation.

The workshop Your own AI doubled down on establishing connections, exchanging views and collaborations. Led by Dunja Milankovi? Pozni? , the workshop was organized around two key questions: 1. challenges with AI, 2. ideas with AI. In a world cafe style, the workshop provided a forum for participants to broadly cocreate the event. This is our AI summary of 80+ workshop participants inputs in Mentimeter :

The table does a good job highlighting this dual perspective of AI: addressing its challenges and showcasing its transformative potential. Many ideas directly tackle the identified challenges, such as enhancing trust through secure data practices or overcoming resistance with tools like localized AI solutions and gamification to increase user engagement. Underlying the ideas is also human centric design, with emphasis on personalized HR tools which help and augment, rather than replace human skills. It is also great to see that the workshop sparked ideas that maintain a practical scope and orientation towards solving everyday problems.

The conference ended with an L&D panel, as it all starts and ends with human learning and development. Sanja Persic from Levi9 Technology Services , Ivana Mihajlovic from Al Dahra and Jelena Sribar from CWB Limited , shared how their companies are currently using AI for L&D. We learned about some great practices in supporting individual accountability and experimentation, while taking care of privacy and trust.

Huge thank you to all speakers! Another huge thank you to the participants - we were so happy to see this level of interest and participation. Next March we are set for Mission25. Perhaps even more hands on and practical workshop style gathering somewhere near river Sava. Let's continue the AI connecting people mindset!