Building the Next Wave of AI: Signal Processing for LLMs and ANNs
Important: The event date is tentative and is subject to change. We are awaiting final confirmation based on venue availability at AWS Loft.
Signal Processing for AI
Signal processing is the next big thing in AI. AI today is powered by massive models and huge datasets—but scale alone is not always the answer. Signal processing, the classic discipline of extracting useful information from complex data, is emerging as a fresh way to push AI forward.
In this session, Professor Gunnar Carlsson, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Stanford University and a pioneer in topological data analysis, will present how signal processing ideas can make large language models more efficient and more accurate by augmenting them with structural signals such as part-of-speech features.
We will then showcase PatANN (Pattern-Aware Approximate Nearest Neighbor search) as a live demonstration of signal processing applied to vector search. PatANN (https://patann.dev) extracts patterns in embedding space to achieve state-of-the-art speed and accuracy, outperforming existing ANN libraries in real benchmarks.
Together, these talks show how signal processing can open new paths for building AI systems that are not just bigger but smarter—with immediate relevance to developers, startups, and investors working on the next generation of AI products.
About Speakers
Prof. Gunnar E. Carlsson is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Stanford University and a pioneer in topological data analysis. He led the DARPA "Topological Data Analysis" project (2005-2010) and founded Ayasdi, a successful AI company applying mathematical techniques to enterprise data problems. His work bridges pure mathematics with practical AI applications, making complex mathematical concepts accessible for real-world implementation.
Yusuf Motiwala is Founder & CEO of mesibo and PatANN, bringing over 20 years of experience in telecom, real-time systems, and scalable infrastructure. He previously founded TringMe and held technical leadership roles at Lucent and Texas Instruments. He holds a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay and specializes in building high-performance systems that scale to billions of operations.