Digital technologies in recent years have been making everyday things smarter, augmenting our experiences and capabilities. Today, connected environments in our homes, offices, and cars benefit from increasingly ubiquitous artificial-intelligence technologies. As it continues to evolve, this technology and increasingly intelligent systems in the workplace will change the way we interact with each other.

This May in San Francisco, our EmTech Digital program will explore how AI technologies are already transforming industries globally, as well as what we can expect to experience as the next wave of innovation becomes more visible at work.

We are inviting speakers from a range of AI disciplines to take the EmTech Digtal stage. Their groundbreaking work aims to provide digital tools and robots with enhanced capabilities. Several of the invited speakers are studying how machines can learn from us, and even from each other, to build on these skills. A preview includes:

-Maja Matarić, founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center, on engineering social robots that will understand and react appropriately to human emotion

-Manuela Veloso, Herbert A. Simon University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, on teaching machines to collaborate with and learn from each other without supervision

-Julie Shah, an assistant professor at MIT, on more natural human-machine collaboration at work

-Gary Marcus, CEO & cofounder of Geometric Intelligence, on whether the way children learn might be applied to machines

We will share more previews in the weeks ahead. Our program will include talks from many more of the individuals and organizations defining this new digital era, examining the implications and opportunities for organizations both large and small.

I hope you’ll make plans now to join us on May 23-24, 2016, in San Francisco. Visit the event website for more information and regular updates.