The AI Conference at Pier 48 draws 120+ speakers

The AI Conference is positioning itself around applied AI rather than speculative discussions, with a program that brings together builders from Anthropic, OpenAI, NVIDIA, Google, and others. Sessions range from Peter Norvig on AI's next breakthroughs to Brian Yang sharing lessons from building a $100M product in six weeks at OpenAI, and Daksh Gupta analyzing one million AI-generated pull requests.

The agenda also includes some of the largest empirical studies of real-world LLM usage to date, with Malika Aubakirova and OpenRouter's Chris Clark having analyzed 100 trillion tokens of inference data. That session, along with talks on AI governance and company longevity, suggests the conference is trying to give attendees a grounded view of where AI stands in practice.

The event's success likely hinges on whether it can deliver the clarity and perspective it promises, particularly for business leaders trying to separate lasting AI approaches from hype. With an anticipated 5,000 attendees and 120+ speakers, the scale is substantial, but the real test will be whether the conversations translate into concrete decisions on building, researching, and investing in AI.