Everyone’s excited about AI and machine learning these days, so new conferences are popping up everywhere. We’ve identified more than 150 events on our ultimate AI conference list, but which ones are actually worth your time?

Which AI Conferences Have The Most ROI For Business Leaders?

As a Business leader, you want to learn about new technologies from experienced technical experts (not just talking heads) but also pick up practical machine learning strategies for applying them to your enterprise. After attending many AI summits as speakers, attendees, and press, we’ve compiled our favorite five events that strike the perfect balance between bringing you content from respected industry leaders while keeping information about applied artificial intelligence accessible and practical for non-technical executives. These are the best non-technical AI conferences to add to your 2018 business calendar.

1. RE*WORK (Boston, SF, Montreal, London, etc.)

This London-based conference hosts machine learning, deep learning, healthcare and autonomous vehicles summits around the world. Leading experts like Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio headline their events while other speakers include top academic researchers and industry executives. The talks are quick & focused, exposing you to a wide range of research and applications in a short period of time which is ideal for gaining broad exposure to the AI industry. Attendees number in the hundreds, so the intimate nature of the conference makes it easy to meet and make lasting connections. On a fun note—the food at this conference is by far the best!

2. O’Reilly Artificial Intelligence Conference (SF, NYC, Beijing, London)

O’Reilly’s AI Conference features a mix of quick, focused talks like RE*WORK’s, but also in-depth technical tutorials and workshops. They leverage their technical publishing arm and long standing reputation to attract established experts like Andrew Ng and Peter Norvig but also diverse, up-and-coming talent like Rana El Kaliouby and Rachel Thomas. The event is large and varied enough to appeal to both business and technical executives as well as engineers and data scientists. A “the place to meet up” for many in the industry, both their NYC and SF events are ideal meeting grounds to connect with and learn from the best.

3. The AI Summit (HK, SF, Singapore, Zurich, NYC, London)

The AI Summit hosts a series of AI conferences around the world targeted to brands. These events typically headline with executives from Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo with titles such as Chief Information Officers, Chief Innovation Officer and Head of Data. The events don’t feature the same caliber of technical leadership or depth of content as either RE*WORK or O’Reilly AI Conference, but are ideal for meeting and learning from other business executives who are tackling similar challenges as you. Our favorite aspect of the AI Summit is the networking app that enables you to easily find, contact, and arrange meetings with other attendees.  

4. Singularity University Summits (SF, Boston, NYC, San Diego and Internationally)

Singularity University (SU) was started by AI leader and futurist Ray Kurzweil. The organization hosts four annual summits in the US each with a different topic—general, exponential manufacturing, exponential finance, and exponential medicine. The conference reflects the mission of the university: to study understanding of humanity and intelligence, addressing breakthrough technology and the great challenges of our time. SU events attract talented and high-caliber attendees, usually executives or entrepreneurs working on disruptive technologies and businesses.

5. AI With The Best (Online)

You might not always have the time or budget to travel to a top-notch AI conference, but that doesn’t mean you can’t access the experts! AI With The Best features leading AI researchers like Yoshua Bengio and Ian Goodfellow along with a mix of technical content from engineering leaders as well as practical business advice and applications from executives. This online conference has an accessible price point but doesn’t compromise on quality.

We’ve secured exclusive TOPBOTS discounts to many of these events. You can find them on our Ultimate Directory of AI Conferences. 

Honorary Mentions

If the top 5 AI events we recommended for business leaders doesn’t work with your schedule, there are several other top-rated conferences we’ve attended which we also recommend checking out.

NYU Future Labs AI Summit (NYC)

NYU Future Labs is a public-private partnership between the city of NYC and NYU. They are typically an AI accelerator / incubator, but also host semi-annual conferences. Rather than solely have a demo day of their startups, Managing Director Steve Kuyan incorporates top panelists and speakers in a multi-day conference. At an affordable price and smaller setting, this is great for both students and professionals.

Strata Data Conference (London, NYC, Singapore, San Jose)

Another one of the O’Reilly conferences series, this fast-growing conference is focused on big data. But as big data is now also transforming and translating over to AI, it has become another space for AI folks to gather. The NYC version of this four-day technology extravaganza now clocks in at more than 7,000 attendees and is one of the largest conferences in the space.

MIT Northern California: Future of AI Conference (San Francisco)

One conference that keeps growing, this day-long MIT conference brings in alumni and technology players in the Bay Area. More business-focused than tech-focused, you’ll find investors and venture capitalists at this half-day event. It’s not too pricey either which is a plus.

LDV Vision Summit (NYC)

This is an annual event by LDV Capital, a venture fund focused on vision technology. They’re interested in how AI will shape vision and image search. It’s an interesting event and accessible at a reasonable price tag.

Getting ready to plan your conference stops in 2018? Check out our ultimate list of conferences along with exclusive TOPBOTS discounts.

Preparing For Your Conference

Want to get the most out of your AI conference experience? Before you go, we recommend you read our bestselling book, Applied AI: A Handbook For Business Leaders, which is designed to give non-technical executives a foundational understanding of AI and machine learning technologies and help you make better decisions for your business.

The book is available via digital download below or via purchase on Amazon.