Neil Sahota

Neil Sahota (萨冠军) is the CEO of ACSI Labs, United Nations (UN) AI Advisor, IBM Master Inventor, Professor at UC Irvine, and author of best-seller, Own the A.I. Revolution. With 20+ years of business experience, he works with organizations to create their core business strategy, enter new markets, and develop next-generation products/solutions powered by emerging technology. His work experience spans multiple industries including legal services, healthcare, life sciences, retail, travel and transportation, energy and utilities, automotive, telecommunications, media/communication, and government. Moreover, Neil is one of the few people selected for IBM's Corporate Service Corps leadership program that pairs leaders with NGOs to perform community-driven economic development projects. For his assignment, Neil lived and worked in Ningbo, China where he partnered with Chinese corporate CEOs to create a leadership development program.

In addition, Neil partners with entrepreneurs to define their products, establish their target markets, and structure their companies. He is a member of several investor groups like the Tech Coast Angels, advises venture capital funds like Miramar and CerraCap, and helped create the UN’s Innovation Factory, a global program for social impact entrepreneurs. Neil also serves as a judge in various startup competitions and mentor in several incubator/accelerator programs. 

Neil currently co-hosts AI for All Podcast with Ryan Chacon where you’ll hear from AI companies, experts, researchers, academics, and industry leaders on the latest advancements in all things AI, machine learning, data science, and robotics.

He actively pursues social good and volunteers with nonprofits. Neil cofounded the UN's AI for Good Initiative and is actively helping them build out their ecosystem of strategic partnerships. He is currently helping the Zero Abuse Project prevent child sexual abuse as well as Planet Home to engage youth culture in sustainability initiatives. Over the last twelve years, he has served as a Board Director to several non-profit organizations such as Inteleos and Computing for Humanity as well as corporate boards from around the world like Legalmation, Lingmo, and Shineville.

Speaking Topics - 

Disrupting the Box: TUCBO™ Is the Secret to Thinking Differently

To innovate, you must think differently. The problem, though, is everyone talks about thinking differently, but no one ever shows you how to do it. In this session, you will learn the tried-and-true TUCBO™ method to develop a disruptive idea. More importantly, you will also learn what it takes to transform the idea into a successful product or service.

Are You Killing Your Business? The Metaverse is Fueling Value Growth

Successful, on-going businesses maintain the eternal balance innovation and risk management. However, what if there was a way to fuel more innovation and disruption while also significantly reducing risk?  This is the power of the Metaverse: creating a digital twin of any problem/opportunity and enabling creative thinking through experimentation and risk taking without any real-world impact to the business. Already, we have worked with the C-suite of over 50+ Global Fortune 1000 companies to create a replicable solution where business leaders found more innovative ideas delivering $1B+ in value to their organizations while also improving their creative thinking skills and accelerating their response time to crisis events. Through the convergence of the Metaverse, cognitive science, and AI, companies are unleashing exponential and accelerated growth. Are you ready to start your journey?

Building Resilience: Tackling Mental Health with the Metaverse

What if you could create a safe space (no real-world impacts) that perfectly mimics the triggers and subsequent scenarios around anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues? This is the power of the Metaverse: creating a digital twin of any event and enabling experimentation and risk taking. Working with therapists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and enterprises, we have created a solution where people with mental health issues can engage their problems in a safe space and develop their coping skills. So, when the times comes, they confront a triggering event in the real-world, they already have the resilience to better manage the situation.

Hybrid Intelligence: Advancing Human Creativity Through AI & the Metaverse

Hybrid intelligence will drive the 4th Industrial Revolution. That is, human abilities that are augmented with machine capabilities will shape the future of work. This is not limited to just tasks and activities but also the squishy skills like communication, teamwork, empathy, and creativity. Already through the combination of cognitive science, AI, and the metaverse, we are advancing people’s capabilities with these squishy skills. Join this session to learn how you can tap into this convergence and advance your own organization through hybrid intelligence.

Future of Work: The Forgotten Side

The 4th Industrial Revolution has begun, and technology is accelerating the rate of change so fast that organizations struggle to keep up. As we look to the future of work, it is tough to maintain a sound talent management strategy. With so much emphasis on technical skills, organizations are overlooking the true importance of critical thinking, creativity, diversity, and interpersonal skills to sustain organizational success. So much of the future of work will require thought exercises, communicating great ideas through storytelling, and imagining a unique experience. This presentation will show why focusing on great technologists is not enough. To truly drive innovation, organizations will need to find people skilled in philosophy and the arts.

Life 3.0 Advancing Health with Hybrid Intelligence

As society advances health and medicine, it is not human versus machine. Rather, it is healthcare professional knowledge and experience augmented by artificial intelligence (AI.) This what we call hybrid intelligence, and it holds the power to accelerate all aspects of medicine. Tapping into hybrid intelligence requires embracing a new model and methodology. Already, top medical companies and innovation centers are tapping into this capability but have only scratched the service. In this presentation, learn how to leapfrog the competition and become a leader in the future of health.

The Ripple Effect: Why We All Need to Be Responsible AI Practitioners

As technologists, we often have a laser-like focus on achieving the specific outcomes we need to build. Unfortunately, we often miss the other uses, or misuses, of our technology. Given our ever-increasing speed of change, use of massive amounts of data, and entrusting of AI with decisions, answering the question of “just because we can, should we do it?” is no longer enough. With the great divide between things like Digital Twins and DeepFakes, we all need to become proficient in understanding the ripple effects of our tech and how we weave responsible AI into every facet of our work. Join this session to learn how you can tap into this framework and be a responsible AI practitioner.

Bias in AI, but what about AI taking out the bias in us?

All data is biased. As human trainers, we have implicit bias that we often teach our AI/ML systems. However, could AI also be the bias detector? Learn about the research we’ve been doing into this field, and how we’ve been able to apply it… even in something as controversial as the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation case. Join this session to learn the answers on how AI will be our guardian against bias.

Innovation: Tactical Learning with Actionable Next Steps (Workshop)

This tailored workshop is made for businesses of all industries and sizes looking to innovate either internally or externally. Neil works with teams of all levels (C-level executives, to people on the ground, and mixed groups) through the different stages of Ideation, Transformation, Implementation, and Intrapreneurship Culture Building

• Participants will walk away with a completed deliverable and actionable plans

• Leverages collaboration through group work among the participants 

• Hands-on experience

• Opportunity for participants to showcase their thought leadership as well as learn from each other

• Builds an ongoing community among the group members to help each other

• Provides tangible artifacts that participants can immediately use to produce a new product/service/solution

• Builds an ongoing community among the group members to help each other

• Provides tangible artifacts that participants can immediately use to produce a new product/service/solution

Additional Speaking Topics:

• Defusing the Next Critical Situation: How the Metaverse Is Reshaping Law Enforcement
• The Law Firm’s Race to Embrace the Digital World: The Metaverse is Reshaping the Practice of Law