On July 28, Siggraph will kick off the 2024 conference with a significant NVIDIA presence. NVIDIA is the current leader in AI technology, a lead that is the result of a multi-decade effort that was unmatched by any other company. The effort was driven by NVIDIA’s founding CEO, Jensen Huang, who made one of the riskiest long-term gambles in tech history with AI. That gamble has played out extremely well and has pushed NVIDIA’s valuation to the top of the tech industry, making it the darling and leader of AI developments worldwide.
But to continue to drive the market, NVIDIA needs to engage developers every chance it gets. Siggraph is the latest related event that NVIDIA will be working through to accomplish that goal. Both Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg will not only be at the event this year, but will also be on stage together the first day (you can attend virtually), setting the tone for the entire event.
Let’s talk about what you can expect from Huang’s Fireside Chat, and the later joint presentation by Huang and Zuckerberg as they work to define the future of generative AI, AGI (artificial general intelligence), mixed reality and robotics.
Jensen Huang’s Fireside Chat
Huang has been talking about AI for decades, and I’ve seen most of his public presentations on the topic. There are few if any that know about the current state of this technology and how best to apply it than the CEO of NVIDIA. For instance, when HP came to market with its line of AIPCs, it conferred with Huang and his team to tighten its focus and refine its resulting designs and efforts. This enabled HP to pivot away from the field of me-too offerings into something far more usefully tied to AI applications and security, not just revolutionary hardware with little to run on it.
Expect Huang to talk about autonomous vehicles and robotics as he has in prior shows, and potentially to even showcase one or two of the resulting designs, much like he showcased the Disney Star Wars robots some months back. He has been championing and testing avatar interfaces for autonomous cars for several years now, and I’d also expect him to talk about glasses-free 3D rendered avatars that could be used in those cars to humanize them. In addition, he will update his forecast for when AGI becomes available as the next, even bigger phase of this latest industrial revolution kicks off.
I expect he’ll also highlight some of the companies NVIDIA is working closely with to drive effective AI use into the market: Bria.ai which is working to create responsible AI content; Lightricks which is providing a solution that will transform critical story telling from a single prompt; and one of the companies I’m particularly interested in because I’m surrounded by forest fires at the moment, Vibrant Planet, a solution for rapidly identifying wildfires so they can be quickly mitigated before they start taking out towns. Given Global Climate Change, this last could be incredibly important, and 18 of these startups will be showcasing their capabilities at the show.
Huang and Zuckerberg
This session will focus mostly on mixed reality and how AI could change tools like Meta’s Metaquest into a far more powerful collaboration and entertainment solution. One of the most interesting parts will be an update on where we are with regard to creating AI-driven NPCs (non-player characters). These are expected to transform video games, particularly those using VR headsets like Meta’s, into far more realistic and interesting experiences. Imagine being able to choose a team of AIs that will follow your direction and play with you if none of your human friends are online, or NPCs that can hold a conversation and help you complete missions and story arcs.
One of the interesting topics I expect to be covered is the use of AI for realtime AI-powered sports storytelling that, when combined with a VR headset like Meta’s, could transform sports viewing into a far more engaging experience. Videoverse is another company connected to NVIDIA that will be at the show, and this is its specialty.
Wrapping Up:
Siggraph 2024 looks to be an amazing show this year with a heavy focus on current and future AI use, tools, companies, and incredible advancements in VR, robotics, and autonomous machines. If you want to challenge your imagination, check the show out, there are many sessions that will be streamed. If you attend in person, a large number of classes could help you ramp up to create or improve your knowledge of AI, making you far more valuable as a consultant, employee or buyer of this technology.
Keeping up to speed on AI will be ever more important going forward because generative AI and AGI will transform how we deal and interact with both real and virtual worlds to a point where, shortly, we not only may not be able to tell the difference, but we may also simply not want to.
