From Siri to AI Agents and Beyond: 
Navigating the Near Future with AI | Keynote address to Spark Accelerate, Auckland, New Zealand, November 12, 2024

AI is accelerating history at unprecedented speed, transforming how we work, learn, and live. This presentation offers historical context for understanding the modern AI revolution, tracing the technological journey from the World Wide Web to ChatGPT and looking ahead to Artificial General Intelligence. Drawing on 40 years in AI research and experience as co-founder and CTO of Siri, Gruber provides both technical insight and practical wisdom for navigating this transformative wave. Using the framework of “Humanistic AI,” he explores how to harness AI for augmentation of human work and collaboration with people rather than automation and competition with human work.

Topics covered in this presentation include:

• The technological confluence that enabled Siri and how it led to modern AI chatbots
• Understanding AI capabilities and critical limitations, including the “hallucination” problem
• The concept of AI as a “Language Savant” – what this means for practical applications
• Industry transformation across software engineering, creative services, and beyond
• The potential for AI to address global challenges in education, mental health, and scientific discovery
• How organizations can choose between automation vs. augmentation strategies
• The democratizing potential of AI to bring transformative benefits to everyone

The presentation concludes with an optimistic vision of how AI’s software-based nature enables global distribution of intelligent services, potentially solving problems that have been left unsolved for too long. Includes Q&A session exploring practical implications for individuals and organizations.