HOPE (Hackers on planet earth, a hacker convention) tried to invite some AI companies people as speakers and the reactions has been interesting
We have reached out to people at some of the major AI companies in the list below, asking them to speak at this year’s HOPE conference to start an open dialog about AI. Yet, in every case, when the representatives of the AI companies learned that their talk would not be allowed to be a mere unchallenged sales pitch, they became significantly less interested. And when they learned we would allow— and encourage— audience members to ask questions, the representatives stopped responding to us altogether. This happened with each and every company.