CogX London 2019 - The festival of AI and Emerging Technology

I am Sanjeev and work as a Web Services Manager at Southwark Council. I attended Day 1 of the CognitionX (CogX) event at London's Kings Cross.  Here's a summary reflection of the day.

I was struck by how the event sprawled over a large area just by King's Cross Station.  That was made more clear by the pouring rain which you needed to face to get from the different stages located in one of 5 zones. 

An address by the Mayor of London

London mayor Sadiq Khan formally opened the whole event at the Impact Stage with a short address.  With a reference to the pouring rain, he drew a parallel with mud and wellies at the annual Glastonbury Music festival. He welcomed tech companies choosing London as a place to base themselves and do business and cited the successful technology implementations in the capital of contact less on the underground and the newly created ULEZ zone.  He sees a growing future role of technology companies choosing to locate to London regardless of the outcome of Brexit. The Mayor asked of tech leaders to ensure they recruit women and people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds in order that our workplaces reflect the people we serve/our customers.

Group co-founders

Charlie Muirhead and Tabitha Goldstaub, both co-founders of CognitionX introduced the current state of play in the AI world.  This event began in 2015 with about 30 organisations in a small set up.  It has grown today to a global on-demand expertise network of world leaders from academia, government and business that make up the AI community. Predictions on the future of AI and where it will take us were seen as unclear but meeting at events like this was actively encouraged so that communication and sharing findings within the field remain open and transparent. 

The use of AI in government services

Working in local government, a talk at the 'Lab to Live' stage titled 'GovTech: The use of AI in government services' caught my attention.  Taking a free shuttle bus to the Orange Zone, I arrived during a keynote speech from Oliver Dowden, the Minister for implementation from the Cabinet Office. He announced the launch of SPARK which is an initiative to facilitate proven technological creativity and innovation within the public sector marketplace.  He encouraged SMEs to apply and join this group which can be used by the public sector to find AI suppliers.  The Minster's keynote was followed by a panel discussion made up of AI experts across government and the AI industry.  Marten Kaevats, National Digital Advisor for the Government of Estonia cited 85% of government services are now online.  When questioned about how that is taken by the people of Estonia, Marten said it has become the expectation of Estonians. Citing his own example of submitting a tax return, Marten said it was a simple straightforward online process that took him less than 10 minutes to complete this year.  When asked about the use of AI in the Estonian judicial courts, Marten made clear the distinction between the use of AI for quite straight forward cases like parking offences.  Here the process of serving a penalty is based entirely on logic making it a perfect candidate for AI.  More complex cases like murder and domestic abuse cases are not suitable for this type of technology.  Austin Tannery, Head of AI from Kainos that works with government organisations on data and technical solutions highlighted that the biggest challenge for implementing AI did not come from the technology but from organisational culture.  Jean Innes, Director of Transformation & Strategy, Faculty AI said it is important to be open as to how decisions using AI are made to ensure user confidence.  

New London AI Centree at UCL 

This talk was followed by a presentation from Scott Gardner, Chief Executive UK and Ireland, CISCO and David Barber, University College London(UCL).  David announced the opening of a new AI Centre at UCL, used to accelerate digital innovation in the UK.  Part of the reason tech companies were choose the UK for investment is the historic proven track record in creating and implementing new technology including text to speech and predictive text on mobile devices.   

UN Sustainable Goals

CogX 2019 also has a focus on encouraging the community to consider how tools, technology and talent can be applied to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  These 17 goals seek to address global challenges faced by poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice.

The CogX app

The scale and breadth of what is on offer can feel rather overwhelming.  To help, the CogX 2019 app helped signpost the CogX agenda, side events, Expo updates and partner activities, including event matchmaking to put you in touch with others at the event.   

It was my first time at Coal Drops Yard, the area home to Google, YouTube, Havas and Universal Music. It's a very cool tech hub and well worth a visit if you've not been.

AI at Southwark

We're busy at Southwark building really cool e-forms that integrate with back office systems, have set up a new public website search and are reviewing our form standards to provide Southwark residents an ideal user journey.  Looking at using AI is definitely a next step for the Southwark Web Services team.  We are considering the possibilities of looking at using chatbots across the business to improve our self serve offering and automating processes in our Revenues and Benefits Team to save time, money and improve efficiency. 

Page last updated: 13 June 2019