For Christoph Auer-Welsbach, partner, IBM Ventures, interaction between humans and machines is nothing new: "Think of chess -- here people have been playing against computers for years." He sees artificial intelligence (AI) not as a danger, but as a valuable way of rounding out human abilities. "Computers will not be superior to us," Auer-Welsbach says. In many professions, however, AI can make people's everyday work easier. Take jobs in the healthcare sector, for instance: "To stay up to date on the state of all patients or all medical developments at all times, a doctor would have to spend 160 hours a week reading. And doctors just don't have that kind of time."

There is a massive amount of hype that surrounds AI. How much is fact, how much is fiction? This event is to decipher the status of AI technology currently by providing a group of AI experts to present and chat on the subject. The event will begin with two introduction presentations, one by Azeem Azhar on "Why the Boom Now?" and the second by Christoph Auer-Welsbach on IBM Watson and City.ai. Following, a panel discussion moderated by Tak Lo will ensue on "The Status of AI in Asia Today" with Sinuhe Arroyo, Jason Chiu, and Jeffrey Broer.