AI Con USA 2026 - AI Transformation

Tired of staring at the chat box of an AI assistant wishing it could actually do a task for you rather than just telling you what to do? Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the glue between an AI agent and your data and tools. With MCP, AI assistants can read your documents, conversations, and other context and take action for you by sending emails, submitting tickets and more. But what really is MCP and how do you use MCP servers safely in practice as part of your day-to-day workflow? This half-day course introduces MCP and dives into practical use cases. Laurel will walk you through how to...

Agents! Finally, a term that might be even more over-hyped than AI! But what exactly are Agents, and more importantly, how do you use them? Where do Agents fit within the overall AI toolkit? What capabilities do they add, and what tasks can they help us perform? Dona and Jeremiah will help you gain a solid understanding of Agents and the fundamental components of an Agent-based AI system. You’ll learn key design principles for Agents, as well as when to leverage them and scenarios where they may not be the best choice. We'll cover how to identify business problems that are well-suited for...

The era of single-turn AI prompting is over, giving way to the sophisticated "digital assembly line." This session guides technical leaders, CTOs, and AI product managers through the critical leap from isolated AI tools to coordinated, multi-agent constellations capable of autonomously executing complex enterprise workflows. Marshall will dissect the four levels of agentic evolution, focusing on today's epicenter of innovation: cross-system orchestration. Because the risk of cumulative failure multiplies with every automated handoff, he will unpack the architectural strategies required to...

Despite record investment in artificial intelligence, the gender gap in AI remains staggering. Women make up less than 22% of AI and ML professionals globally (World Economic Forum, 2024) and hold under 15% of technical leadership roles in the field. Only 3% of angel investors in regions like the Pacific Northwest are women, so the earliest capital shaping AI’s future is overwhelmingly male. This session for leaders and managers explores why this workforce imbalance matters and how it’s holding back innovation both across the tech ecosystem and within individual organizations. First, Lana...

Imagine starting your workday to find all your company’s sensitive data has been leaked due to a nearly imperceptible hack embedded in an AI prompt. The culprit isn’t the AI model but rather a lack of protections surrounding it. When rapidly adopting AI at scale, many organizations unintentionally ignore a crucial element: security and governance. Often, companies will only add operational AI rules post-deployment. However, this approach creates hidden blind spots and slows security teams’ responses when threats inevitably appear. In this presentation, Mark Toler will reveal why AI...

Advances in robot learning and affordable general-purpose hardware are changing physical work faster than any past wave of automation. Industrial robot arms transformed repetitive factory tasks, but they could only operate in tightly controlled settings. Now, new learning methods and off-the-shelf mobile robots make it possible to teach machines to perform many kinds of hands-on work in warehouses and logistics facilities. This session looks at where the technology stands today, what has changed, and what the next few years will bring. Attendees will learn how to spot real opportunities...

Artificial Intelligence is driving innovation across industries, but its growing energy demands pose critical challenges around cost, scalability, and sustainability. In this talk, Bhanu will share practical strategies for designing energy-efficient AI systems, focusing on: dynamic batching & KV caching for reducing inference overhead, sparse neural networks & structured pruning for lightweight models, carbon-aware scheduling to align compute with renewable energy, federated learning & edge deployments to reduce data transfer energy, and a sustainability maturity model for...

We are entering a defining chapter for bioscience—one where AI is no longer an accessory, but a core engine of discovery. At the Allen Institute, AI is being woven throughout the scientific process empowering research teams to analyze complex biological systems at scale. Their teams are collaborating to develop frontier AI applications like advanced computer vision to interpret high-resolution imaging data, multimodal models that integrate complex molecular, cellular, and physiological signals, as well as intelligent systems to assist researchers as they navigate and synthesize vast...

Borrowing from tabletop games, this session transforms AI leadership into a live-action adventure. Each team faces challenges drawn from real-world case studies: biased data, budget cuts, regulatory chaos, and “move-fast” culture. Every choice (and dice roll) reveals how easily good intentions can drift into poor outcomes. You’ll leave understanding why alignment isn’t a compliance checkbox, it’s a continuous act of human judgment. Key takeaways include: experience on how small trade-offs create large ethical ripple effects, applying alignment frameworks that balance business speed with...

With thousands of Intuit services, managing incidents efficiently and effectively becomes essential. In this talk, Akshay will examine how they have moved beyond traditional incident management methods to embrace AI-driven solutions for speed, resilience, and continuous improvement. The session will outline how Intuit has scaled incident management across thousands of services, ensuring robust support across their ecosystem. See how the team utilized real-time insights and advanced automation to enhance AWS-related incident detection and resolution across Intuit's infrastructure, as well...

Traditional software testing is fundamentally deterministic: the same inputs must always produce the same outputs. Yet many teams introduce AI into their testing without first defining the problem the AI is meant to solve, leading to brute-force experimentation and unreliable results. Google’s 2025 DORA report highlights that user-centricity is a prerequisite for AI success and that AI is most effective when it is pointed at a clear problem. AP shows you how that insight applies technically to testing. Before AI can be used as a testing tool, it must first be tested and understood in the...

Successful AI adoption is 10% technology and 90% organizational change—and most organizations are failing at the 90%. In this dynamic, experience-driven session, we will cut through the hype and get honest about what it actually takes to move AI from promising pilot to measurable business impact. Drawing on nearly three decades of technology leadership and his background as a U.S. Army Ranger, Shawn brings a battle-tested perspective to the modern boardroom: the same principles that forge elite units into high-performing teams are exactly what today's organizations need to win the AI...