MLTO Executive AI Panel - Balancing AI Innovation with Safety: Perspectives from Industry & Academia
Agenda
6:00 – 6:30 PM - Arrivals & Networking
6:30 – 6:45 PM – Opening Reflections from Panelists (3–4 minutes each)
6:45 – 7:15 PM – Moderated Discussion
7:15 – 7:45 PM – Audience Q&A and Closing Remarks
7:45 – 8:30 PM - Networking & Wrap-up
Speakers
Ben Davies, Chief Information Officer, Vector Institute
Ben is the current CIO and CISO at the Vector Institute and is responsible for overseeing Vector’s scientific and business computing environments. He leads Vector’s participation in building a national AI research compute environment as part of the national Pan-Canadian AI Strategy and sits on the OECD.AI Expert Group on Compute and Climate. Ben has a broad background in technology management with prior experience including a CIO role at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and over twenty-five years of experience in strategic planning, IT operations management, cybersecurity, and technology consulting with organizations in North America, Europe and Asia. He has held progressive IT management positions in multiple sectors including pharmaceutical, software manufacturing, transportation, travel, and consulting. He was co-founder and president of a managed services company, has been involved in several start-ups, and has been a member of several non-profit boards.
Tony Savor, VP Platform Engineering, Index Exchange
Tony Savor is VP, engineering platform at Index Exchange, bringing over 30 years of experience in building and leading mission-critical, planet-scale infrastructure. Most recently, Tony led Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) engineering, defining the future of distributed computing infrastructure. Before that, he oversaw the engineering for Facebook’s online data storage and serving infrastructure—the largest system of its kind globally. Earlier in his career, he spearheaded engineering for a foreign-exchange retail and institutional trading platform at OANDA.com, which trades tens of billions of dollars per day.Tony holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two daughters.
Chad Koziel, AVP Generative AI Delivery, Layer 6 AI - TD Bank
Chad leads AI product delivery at Layer6. He received his bachelor's from British Columbia Insitute of Technology, and his master's from Queen's University. He joined the data science field in 2014, after early career stops in metallurgy, professional poker, supply chain and deal-making. He is now a published author, co-inventor of 5 patents (and growing) and has brought numerous AI products to market, including TD's first generative AI chatbot. Chad is a husband, and father to two young children.
Swanand Gupte, Director of Artificial Intelligence at TELUS
Swanand is a Director of AI at Telus and leads a amazing team of Data Scientists, Machine Learning and Cloud Engineers with a mission to supercharge business decisions at TELUS with AI-driven insights. He has a passion for solving complex business problems and his previous work as a strategy professional for 11+ years spans across multiple industries, geographies and functional areas including organizations such as Tiger Analytics and Samsung, and working in Korea and the US.
Many thanks to our supporters and sponsors!
We'd also like to acknowledge our venue partners for generously providing their amazing space for the event, and Trajectory Labs and PRAKTIKAI for making the event happen.
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