Top takeaways, quotes, and highlights from ScaleUp:AI 2024

Hundreds of founders, builders, enterprise executives, and investors were joined by thousands virtually for ScaleUp:AI 2024. From high-level conversations around embracing an AI-first mindset for leaders, to deep dives and use cases, the conversations coalesced around a few big topics.

Here are some of the top insights our attendees captured from the day.

AI is augmenting human capability versus replacing it

“For AI today, only considering delegating decision-making power if there are many ways to be right, it isn’t super important to be right, and a human being can check/verify results at a glance.”
— Jonathan Frankle, Chief AI Scientist, Databricks

(Thanks to audience member Erin Perry for capturing this insight, among many others, as well as some incredible sketches of our speakers — see them at the end of this post.)

“We want to beat what humans are able to do. From a decision-making perspective, it changes the way our customers can solution their products.”
— May Habib, CEO and Cofounder, Writer

Agents and automation, while popular, won’t happen overnight

“Govern applications, not technology. Automate tasks, not jobs.” 
— Andrew Ng, Founder and Executive Chairman, Landing AI

Thanks to audience member Tobias Hann for capturing the sentiment around agentic AI and automation:

“Andrew Ng highlighted that if there’s one thing in AI that one should pay attention to, it’s Agentic AI. And Ruchir Puri, Chief Scientist, IBM Research predicted that ‘2025 will be the year of agents’.”

Databricks’ Jonathan Frankle cautioned that while Agentic AI is a buzzword today, we need to be realistic. “Giving AI systems decision-making power is a huge step, and it won’t be easy to get that done. Small improvements will happen and will take time.”

Google’s Nenshad Bardoliwalla seemed to agree: “Think augmented, not autonomous agents. It took Waymo $30B and lots of years to deploy self-driving cars in one city. Decision-making by AI won’t be delegated overnight.”

(This quote was captured — along with plenty more great insights — by Madhur Aggarwal.)

However, keynote Allie K. Miller did provoke urgency and a timeline, predicting the autonomous enterprise is “three to five years away, and the companies that will grow into them are being funded now.”

Automation is also impacting the worlds of finance, health care, and the military

“With humans in the loop, AI empowers clinicians to focus on the critical, nuanced parts of care, enhancing what only human expertise can deliver.”
— Cris Ross, CIO, Mayo Clinic

“How do we offload risk onto machines and, at the same time, optimize humans for the things [only] humans can do?”
— General Jim Rainey, Commander of Army Futures Command

Responsible by design, from concept to implementation

“We need to be making sure that we’re moving purposefully and knowingly and with a little bit of humility too.”

— Chloé Bakalar, Chief Ethicist, Meta

Building versus buying, or both

“We’re ushering in an era of Legos. We’re all becoming builders.”
— Raphael Ouzan, CEO and Founder, A.Team

From Chris Bennett, “Honored to have been able to talk about Dell Technologies approach to AI and how the Dell AI Factory helps customers ‘buy or build’ in whatever stage of their AI program they are in.”

A dance break with Andrew Ng

Maybe Ng was inspired by our AI-created and performed playlist for the event this year (have a listen!), but he treated our audience to his own AI-generated ScaleUp:AI theme song.

An opportunity to connect

In addition to the 20 in-person and virtual sessions throughout the conference, attendees valued the opportunity to connect with other AI leaders and our event partners — including Dell Technologies, Google Cloud, Nasdaq, SAP, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and our industry partners: A.team, Acceldata, Anjuna, Copado, CrewAI, Exiger, Jasper, LaunchDarkly, Leapsome, Nexus Cognitive, Pipefy, Quantive, Riviera Partners, SingleStore, Skyflow, Templafy, Valence, Workato, Writer. Watch these partners’ live SoundBytes to dig deeper into their perspectives on the future of AI and how it’s impacting their businesses, industries, and customers.

Leapsome Co-CEO and Cofounder Jenny Podewils shared, “I had the opportunity to bring some amazing female AI leaders together to attend the conference and have a small dinner later, reflecting on the conversations of the day.”

Many more relationships were made over lunch and drinks. Photo courtesy Inna Tokarev Sela. Read her takeaways from the event.

Attendees also got a chance to see AI automation in action in the AI Lab, where the team shared how Insight Onsite is helping companies scale AI to drive remarkable business outcomes.

An ongoing conversation

All registrants will receive these session recordings, and we’ll be sharing plenty here on the Insight blog over the coming months.

Here are some recent perspectives on AI that we will continue building on:

• Reimagination of everything: How intelligence-first design and the Next Stack will unlock human+AI collaborative reasoning
• AI Agents are disrupting automation: Current approaches, market solutions and recommendations
• Navigating generative AI’s seismic shifts for marketing in 2024
• Navigating the LLMops landscape: What you need to know
• Investor POV: AI governance and responsible use
• Investor POV: Parsing the generative AI application layer
• The next stack: Generative AI from an investor perspective

The discussions from ScaleUp:AI are a continuation of the many conversations we are having every day — internally, with founders, and with enterprises.

We’re excited to continue the conversation with you.

Sketches by Erin Perry.