AI Research Tech Talk Series: Cutting Edge AI Development

Apr 23 @ 18:00 - 20:00 JST

AI Research and Development is a topic of great importance to the world. Currently, most of the R&D is happening in the US and China, but the overall effort is international. Sakana AI is an upcoming, world-class AI R&D lab in Japan (located right inside CIC Tokyo in Toranomon Hills!).

There are many tech talks about AI, but those are mainly focused on the application of existing AI techniques to business and enterprises. Here we want to have a forum to discuss cutting-edge AI R&D with the community through a series of AI Research Community Talk events. The topics discussed will shape how AI will evolve, and effectively accelerate the technological development of our world over the next few decades. For each of these sessions, we will invite world class AI researchers to give a 15-minute talk about their latest research, and we, Sakana AI, will also give a talk about our own latest developments.

The main focus of this talk event is on the research side, where we will talk about cutting edge AI development that will show up in future AI products years later.

For this first talk, we have invited world class researchers to discuss their work on a range of topics, from adaptive neural networks that “grow” in real-time, brain-controlled robotic interfaces, and Sakana AI’s latest development on Evolutionary Model Merge techniques which aim to completely change the way foundational AI models will be developed in the future. You can find bio’s of our speakers for our first event, which will give a flavor about what we will be discussing.

Please reserve your ticket soon, as we expect the event to be fully subscribed


[ Event Overview ]

Date: April 23rd, 2024
Time: 18:00-20:00
Venue: CIC Tokyo & Online
※ For the on-site participation, part of the seat will be the public viewing seat
Language: English ( No translation)
Admission: Free
Drink： The venue does not have free drinks provided so please bring your own

[ Programme ]

18:00~18:05 Opening
18:05~18:20 David (Introduce Sakana AI)
18:20~18:35 Joachim Winther Pedersen (Grow-AI)
18:35~18:50 Kai Arulkumaran (Robotics, Araya)
18:50~19:05 Yujin (Evolutionary Model Merge)
19:05~20:00 Open Networking session. Opportunity for Q&A with speakers.

[ Speakers ]

Joachim Winther Pedersen (Grow-AI)
Joachim Winther Pedersen, PhD, received his BSc in psychology from Copenhagen University and Edinburgh University in 2017 and his MSc in IT & Cognition from Copenhagen University and National University of Singapore in 2019. Joachim finished his PhD titled "Bio-Inspired Approaches to Adaptive Artificial Agents" in 2023 and currently holds a postdoc position at the IT University of Copenhagen designing developmental growth algorithms for plastic neural networks.

Kai Arulkumaran (Araya)
Kai is a research team leader at Araya, where he works on brain-controlled robots as part of the JST Moonshot R&D program, and a visiting researcher at Imperial College London. He has previously worked at DeepMind, Microsoft Research, Facebook AI Research, Twitter and NNAISENSE. His research interests are deep learning, reinforcement learning, evolutionary computation and theoretical neuroscience.

David Ha (Sakana AI)
David Ha is the Co-founder CEO of Sakana AI. He previously worked as a Research Scientist at Google, leading the Google Brain Research team in Japan. His research interests include complex systems, self-organization, and creative applications of machine learning. Prior to joining Google, he was a derivatives trader, serving as Managing Director and head of interest rates trading at Goldman Sachs in Japan. He obtained his undergraduate in engineering science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD from the University of Tokyo.

Yujin Tang (Sakana AI)
Yujin Tang is a research scientist at Sakana AI, with prior roles at Google Brain and DeepMind, where he published multiple evolutionary computing related papers at GECCO, NeurIPS, Artificial Life, earning best paper and best paper runner-up awards. He created EvoJAX, an open-source neuroevolution toolkit. Yujin holds a BS from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, an MS from Waseda University, and a PhD from The University of Tokyo.


[ Organizer ]

Sakana AI K.K.
Sakana AI is a Tokyo-based AI R&D company on a quest to create a new kind of foundational AI model based on nature-inspired intelligence. We were established in late 2023, and our investors include Lux Capital, Khosla Ventures, NTT, KDDI, Sony, and many other globally renowned investors. In January of 2024, we announced our seed funding round of $30M US dollars, and we have also been recipients of METI and NEDO's GENIAC Supercomputer Grant in Japan.

Our website is sakana.ai. Follow us via our Twitter account at @SakanaAILabs and on LinkedIn.


[ Co-Organizer ]

Co-Organizer / CIC Tokyo
CIC Tokyo is one of the largest innovation centers in Japan, with space for over 300 companies and organizations, mainly start-ups (companies just starting out and aiming for rapid growth). It provides a vast workspace and a community and services to accelerate business growth and global expansion.

Startups moving into CIC Tokyo will have access to office space and a variety of common areas in a free and open atmosphere. In addition, they will be able to participate in the innovation community in a variety of ways and build new relationships with key players in the ecosystem. CIC Tokyo will also serve as a gateway for easy access to global locations, with more than 220 events related to startups and open innovation being held at CIC Tokyo since its opening in October 2020.