Sessions · Speaker session
A Contrarian but Optimistic Take on AI
Thursday, May 21, 2026 · 4–7 PM PDT
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About this session
The AI debate is broken. On one side, utopians promise a world of infinite abundance. On the other, doomsayers warn of existential catastrophe. Both are wrong.
Ramez Naam, computer scientist, science fiction author, and veteran investor, has spent decades thinking rigorously about where technology actually goes versus where people think it goes. And when it comes to AI, the data tells a far more interesting story than the headlines.
In this talk, Ramez cuts through the hype with metrics, scaling laws, and real-world events to give founders a clear-eyed view of the most transformative technology of our lifetime.
- What does safety and alignment actually look like in practice? How plausible is AGI and ASI?
- Who gets to benefit, and who gets left behind?
- And most importantly, where will the real economic returns be found?
This is the data-driven roadmap every founder needs to navigate the AI era with confidence.
Hosting this session
Ramez Naam
Futurist & Clean Energy Pioneer, Planetary VC
Ramez is a founding faculty member and the former Co-Chair for Energy and Environment atSingularity University. He speaks around the world on innovation, exponential technology, anddisruptive energy technologies.
Ramez’s seminal 2011 Scientific American article, “Smaller, Cheaper, Faster” observed that the price of solar power was dropping exponentially and would eventually be lower than that of any other energy source. He’s since detailed the exponential trends inwind power,energy storage, andelectric vehicles.
In addition to his energy analysis, through his firm Planetary VC, Ramez is aninvestor in numerous startups in the fields of energy, sustainability, and AI; and an advisor to multiple fortune 500 energy and transportation companies.
Before turning to energy, Ramez spent 13 years at Microsoft where he led teams working on efforts in email, web browsing, cloud computing, search, and AI. He holds more than 20 patents in the fields of information retrieval and machine learning, several of them co-authored with Bill Gates.
Ramez’s work has appeared in or been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic, Slate, Business Week, Discover, Wired, and Scientific American. He's spoken to corporate, government, and non-profit audiences on 6 continents around the world.
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