Edgar Perez Keynote Speaker

The Human Element in ChatGPT

Generative AI and the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Welcome to the Metaverse: The Next Evolution of the Internet

The Metaverse is where our digital and physical lives will converge. It will include a virtual world interoperating with the physical world where we live, and generate a robust economy that spans entertainment, commerce, education and work, while transforming long-standing industries such as finance, retail, healthcare fitness, and more. Today, every major company is staking a claim on the Metaverse, from social media giants Meta (formerly Facebook) and Snap to gaming powerhouses Tencent, Microsoft and Epic Games, to hardware providers Nvidia and TSMC. Embrace the possibilities the Metaverse will bring to your organization during this fascinating session with Mr. Edgar Perez.

Bitcoin is dead. Long live Ethereum and CBDCs

The blockchain has been declared as a big revolution in business technology; it is indeed a game-changer for a global financial system that needs an upgrade. A more exciting development has been the booming rise in speculative cryptocurrencies based on blockchain technology, from Bitcoin to Ether. This surge has attracted a new generation of crypto bulls who see these crypto currencies as the cash of the future. Meanwhile, central banks and policymakers around the world explore ways to introduce Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). If you buy Bitcoin now, Mr. Edgar Perez says, do it at your own peril. Instead, he explains, it is time to explore the future with Ethereum or other platforms that implement smart contracts; ultimately, let’s be prepared to meet the opportunities and challenges of CBDCs’ widespread deployment around the world.

Is Web3 the Beginning of a New Internet or a Stroke of Marketing Genius?

Web3 promises a better internet built on the blockchain, the distributed ledger systems that form the basis of cryptocurrencies. Backers promise it will cut out traditional middlemen, letting users transact directly and have a greater stake in the applications they use. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, for example, make their money through advertising; yet, they share zero of it. Users are supposed to be happy with likes! If the sirens’ songs are to be believed, Web3 will bring more power into the hands of end users. Some people have different views though. Is Web3 just really a land grab underway by already powerful people? Is it a dystopian vision of a pay-to-play internet? Is Web3 ultimately a mere rebranding of crypto with the aim of convincing people that blockchains are the natural next phase of computing? Mr. Perez will inspire you as he cuts to the Web3 chase.

Meet the Blockchain’s Newest Hype Machine: NFTs

In this session, Edgar explains what NFTs are, how it works and whether we should be jumping on the bandwagon. He addresses why the current NFT mania might be obscuring the beginning of a bubble.

The Artificial Intelligence Breakthroughs that are Changing the Digital World

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been referred as the general ability of computers to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. Through a comprehensive review of the latest artificial intelligence breakthroughs, Mr. Edgar Perez will offer his insights on how these advancements will impact businesses and the human race in general for years to come, and more specifically, how companies can leverage the plethora of available resources to start their digital transformation and implement solutions to formerly intractable problems. Mr. Perez will reveal why AI is the present and the future.

Advice for Global Organizations: Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

A “black swan” event of the magnitude of COVID-19 will certainly trigger a radical change in the expectations of business stakeholders. Organizations that reinvent themselves and leverage Artificial Intelligence, 5G and Blockchain to make the most of better insight and foresight will disproportionally stand to succeed. The requirement of resilience trumps the everlasting pursuit of efficiency; potentially marking the end of supply-chain globalization. Mr. Edgar Perez will inspire CEOs not only to analyze weaknesses but also to discover opportunities to improve corporate performance.

Achieving Digital Impact with “State-of-the-art” Deep Learning

Deep learning has enabled many practical applications of artificial intelligence in today’s digital organizations. Deep learning breaks down tasks in ways that makes all kinds of machine aids seem possible, even likely. Driverless cars, better image recognition, more effective medical diagnoses, AI-generated art, even better language models, are all here today. Mr. Edgar Perez will identify what organizations need to do today to embrace the future, starting with the basics: empowering their employees and turbocharging the organization’s digital transformation strategy. Organizations then can then launch pilots for the most promising opportunities, leveraging “state of the art” cases from today’s global innovators such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Tesla. Mr. Perez will show organizations how to kick start their digital impact transformation.

Is the Global Race to Achieve Quantum Supremacy Coming to an End?

Google recently announced that their most advanced quantum computer, a radically new design to manipulate and process information, has achieved “quantum supremacy” for the first time. The technology giant's Sycamore quantum processor was able to perform an incredibly complex task in 200 seconds, a feat that would take the world's fastest supercomputers 10,000 years to complete. The ultimate development and commercialization of this technology will tremendously accelerate difficult tasks across all industries, including financial services, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and the upcoming space exploration. Are we really there yet? Mr. Edgar Perez will enlighten your audience with the latest head-turning business applications of this revolutionary technology.

What the Boeing 737 Groundings can teach us about Technology and Automation

Only days after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the U.S. FAA grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8, joining airlines and governments worldwide in an effort to guarantee passenger safety, just months after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 involved the same model. Reports point to Boeing’s new automated flight-control system, known as MCAS, as the culprit. However, an initial review of the design, certification and deployment process for the 737 MAX shows an over-reliance on untested technology, potential conflicts of interest between regulators and airlines, and lack of proper documentation and training. Is it still safe to fly? Mr. Edgar Perez will provide an insider’s look at how this dysfunctional process evolved, and what your organization can do to identify technology and operational challenges that can compromise its viability.

Neuro what? Neuromorphic Computing and the Quest to Build an Artificial Brain

Neuromorphic Computing (NC) attempts to emulate the human brain’s neural structure and operation with the goal to match a human's flexibility and ability to learn from unstructured stimuli with the energy efficiency displayed by our brain. NC has grown at the intersection of diverse research disciplines, including computational neuroscience, machine learning, microelectronics, and computer architecture, among others. It seeks to produce a cognition machine that not just reaches decisions, but memorizes information and even deduces facts. Mr. Edgar Perez will enthrall your audience with the possibilities created by computers that will behave as though they were originally engineered for the tasks they are executing, rather than as today’s general-purpose computers.

The Ultimate Business Disruptor: Quantum Computing

Classical computing was invented in the 1940s; the advent of Quantum Computing (QC) will make these computers look painfully slow. Calculations that would take longer than a human’s life span to work out on a classic computer can be completed in a matter of hours or minutes with QC. Furthermore, QC will enable solving a set of problems that couldn’t be solved before. QC’s benefits include efficiently simulating new drug molecules and dramatically reducing the time complex financial calculations take, among many others. For optimization, sampling or search problems, this promises dramatic speedups. Mr. Edgar Perez will reveal why Quantum Computing will disrupt companies in every industry.

The Importance of the Cybersecurity Framework for Directors and CEOs

An email embedded with malware. Security systems hacked by thieves. Credit card numbers stolen from store purchases. There’s certainly no shortage of examples when it comes to data security breaches and the havoc they wreak on business. No wonder then that nearly a third of CEOs in KPMG’s latest global survey identified cyber security as the issue having the biggest impact on their companies today. Every organization should apply a Cybersecurity Framework for analyzing cyber security, and ideally it should be integrated into an organization’s existing enterprise risk framework. The most innovative companies today have recognized that cyber security is a customer experience and revenue opportunity, not just a risk that needs to be managed. Mr. Edgar Perez will explain why this must be done across the entire organization and why the CEO and Board of Directors have the most important role to play.

The Challenges of Content Creation on Machine Learning Steroids

As reporters and editors around the world gear to face the rise of journalism generated by machines, challenges loom large on the horizon. Content published by news agencies already incorporates automated technology. Systems are able to assist reporters in churning out thousands of articles on company earnings reports each reporting period. However, these smart machine learning systems may be challenged by companies that astutely highlight figures or position relevant sentences in an effort to garner a more favorable portrayal. Machine-generated stories are not infallible. Mr. Edgar Perez will offer his insights on how journalists can rise to the challenge so that their APIs are not taken for a ride by such tactics.

Managing the Upcoming Tsunami of Unstructured Data with Artificial Intelligence

The Internet of Things (IoT) explosion will see 75 billion connected devices deployed by 2025. The volumes of data generated will become a tsunami that firms will need to digitalize. Unfortunately, most firms only look at the easy information they can get from structured data while ignoring their unstructured data, which accounts for 90 percent of content generated globally, making unstructured data a tremendous source of untapped value. Artificial Intelligence is making it possible and affordable to sift through and find digital meaning in vast amounts of unstructured data obtained from video, audio, emails, logs, social media posts and IoT devices. All of this data can bring about enormous benefits; Mr. Edgar Perez will show organizations how to reap these benefits today.

Trade Wars and their Impact on Financial Markets already influenced by Artificial Intelligence (AI)

China and the US are locked in an escalating trade battle. The IMF has said that taxing all trade between these two economies would cause some $455 billion in GDP to evaporate; that would be a loss larger than South Africa’s economy. Financial markets are already wobbling with each new trade-war headline. What will happen if they near future? What are the long-term consequences? Would the trade war increase the likelihood of a “flash crash” in financial markets that are increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence-driven electronic trading systems? Mr. Edgar Perez will discuss the dramatic impact of current and subsequent trade wars for both countries involved and the rest of the world.

Social Engineering: The “Weakest Human Link” in Cybersecurity

Social engineering involves tricking your employees into breaching security protocols or giving away information. Social engineering exploits human weaknesses rather than technology, preying upon people’s propensity towards trust. Often, these exploits are used to gather information to support a more targeted cyberattack, with the initial forays based on the premise of ‘little and often’ so as not to cause concern. Employees at all levels, including senior executives, are vulnerable. Mr. Edgar Perez will explain why by improving employee awareness and introducing simple technical measures, organizations can improve their protection against social engineering techniques and the risk of a cyberattack.

The Biggest Risks for Financial Markets

Regulatory changes and technological evolution have transformed the financial landscape. Regulators around the world are now in a race to respond to the evolution of technology in financial markets and prevent its operational challenges from becoming the biggest risk for financial markets. However, when considering technology and the cyber landscape, errors are bound to happen. Financial services firms are expected to have deployed the most sophisticated defense systems against cyberattacks. Most of them would realize the need of these investments and implement them, but their IT departments would soon hit a wall. What would it take to limit the impact of the biggest risk for financial markets?

Establishing or Improving a Cybersecurity Program

The Cybersecurity Framework drafted by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology comprises leading practices from various standards bodies that have proved to be successful when implemented; it also may deliver regulatory and legal advantages that extend well beyond improved cybersecurity for organizations. Its adoption may prove advantageous for businesses across virtually all industries. Mr. Edgar Perez will explain why a proper Cybersecurity Program will build on the analysis of possible areas of concern, an understanding of the firm’s most critical assets, and a thorough review of Information Technology’s policies and procedures when faced with rampant cybercrime.