Day 1 Agenda: The First Workshop of a Public AI Assistant to World Wide Knowledge (WWK)

Back to Summit Overview Day 2 Agenda

February 13, 2025

  8:00 am –  8:30 am | Breakfast 

  8:30 am –  8:45 am | Welcoming Remarks

  • Prof. James Landay, Co-Founder and Denning Co-Director of HAI; Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan Professor, Computer Science, Stanford University

  • Prof. Monica Lam, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Sequoia Capital Professor, Computer Science, Stanford University; Director of the Open Virtual Assistant Lab

  • Lila Tretikov, Partner, Head of AI Strategy, New Enterprise Associates; Former CEO Wikimedia Foundation & Wikipedia Endowment; Former Deputy CTO Microsoft

8:45 am –  9:15 am | Keynote: Large Language Models in 2025: How Much Understanding And Intelligence?

Language Models have been around for decades but took the world by storm in 2022 and are now frequently seen as synonymous with artificial intelligence in the popular media. What can people do with these models? How good are they at understanding and generating human language (historically the main task of the field of Natural Language Processing)? Are these models intelligent and are we on the verge of a new era of artificial super intelligence, as some prominent public voices claim?

  • Prof. Christopher Manning, Director of Stanford AI Lab, Director of HAI; Thomas M. Siebel Professor in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Stanford

 9:15 am – 10:30 am | Creating A Public AI Assistant to World Wide Knowledge
Expanding on the revolutionary advancements in LLM technologies, the Stanford OVAL lab has created and deployed a well-received open-source knowledge assistant that can significantly enhance the productivity of researchers, journalists, and historians. This talk will discuss the technological breakthroughs, case studies in history and journalism, new research frontiers, and the technical feasibility of providing free AI access to knowledge worldwide.

  • Prof. Monica Lam, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Sequoia Capital Professor, Computer Science, Stanford University; Faculty Director of the Open Virtual Assistant Lab

  • Prof. Trevor Getz, African and World History, San Francisco State University

  • Hearst Professional in Residence Cheryl Phillips, Founder and Director of Big Local News, Stanford University

10:30 am – 11:00 am | Break 

11:00 am – 12:30 pm | Forum:  21st Century Knowledge Preservation and Access with AI 

The preservation, documentation, and curation of indigenous languages, records of under-represented communities, and access to public knowledge is a formidable yet critical task that builds on our understanding of the world. This forum .  will cover the technologies, logistics, and ethical considerations of  improving the collection, access, and research of enormous corpora in all languages. We will investigate how AI addresses the scale of the problem at hand and the need for open, public solutions that honor indigenous data sovereignty and community rights.

Open Floor, all participants

12:30 pm –  1:30 pm |  Lunch

1:30 pm –   3:00 pm | Forum: The Need, Opportunities, and Risks for AI-Augmented Journalism

AI creates both promise and peril for journalists: this discussion will cover how AI is transforming journalism, from current examples to discussions of what lies ahead. The forum explores how journalists are using AI to uncover critical accountability stories, and how they are reporting on AI and its impact on specific at-risk communities and the world at large.

Open Floor, all participants

 3:00 pm –  3:30 pm | Break

 3:30 pm –  4:55 Forum: Dream or Reality? Funding the Research and Deployment of Public AI Knowledge Assistants 

AI holds the promise of significantly enhancing the productivity of knowledge workers while promoting equitable access to information globally. Developing a public AI assistant requires sustainable funding to support ongoing research, service deployment, and community engagement. This forum brings together representatives from government research funding agencies, non-profit organizations supporting the humanities, and philanthropic foundations to initiate a dialogue on the possibility of collaborative support for this transformative endeavor.

  • Lila Tretikov, Partner, Head of AI Strategy, New Enterprise Associates; Former CEO Wikimedia Foundation & Wikipedia Endowment; Former Deputy CTO Microsoft (Moderator) 

  • Katerina Antypas, Director of the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, NSF

  • Dr. Kathleen Fisher, Director of the Information Innovation Office, DARPA

  • Dr. Keyanah Nurse, Senior Program Officer, American Council of Learned Societies

  • Dr. Evelyne Viegas, Technical Advisor, Microsoft Research Accelerator

  • Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Open Floor, all participants 

  4:55 pm –  5:00 pm | Closing Remarks: Professor Monica Lam

  5:00 pm –  7:00 pm | Reception

  7:00 pm –  9:00 pm | Speaker dinner