On April 26th, 2023, the third edition of TechSense Summit gathered 200 CIOs and tech decision-makers at Deloitte Luxembourg's D Square building. Experts from the Luxembourgish ecosystem exchanged ideas around AI, data exploitation, and the associated governance issues.

VIP Session

The event started with a friendly VIP lunch followed by three 30 minutes short workshops. Alain Hirtzig, Head of Post CyberLabs and Nicolas Vivarelli, Data Intelligence Manager at POST Telecom, opened the sessions by addressing the topic of "Data Intelligence with privacy preservation". Frédéric Perin, Business Development Manager at Digora, took the stage to raise the subject of "Data Mesch". Anke Jubert, Senior Manager and Léo Schirvanian, Consultant AI & Data at Deloitte Luxembourg delved into how generative AI is revamping the business landscape.

Panel discussions: AI Sovereignty, Governance, and Regulation

Ronan Vander Elst, Partner, Consulting Digital & Technology Leader at Deloitte Luxembourg, introduced the TechSense Summit’s plenary session along with Kamel Amroune, founder and CEO of The Dots, with some welcome words. In front of a packed room, they opened this third edition by giving a quick ChatGPT demonstration and engaging the audience with questions about the most promising applications of AI and the biggest risks associated with its use in a corporate environment.

Emilie Allaert, Founder of Digital Minds and master of ceremony of the conference, then called on stage Filipe Pais, Chief Customer Success Officer at LuxProvide, and Frankwin van Winsen, Head of Development at WEO Water. They shared insights about using satellite data and deep learning algorithms for urban greening and climate change risk mitigation.

Alexandru Tantar, Trustworthy AI Group Leader at LIST, and Stefan Van Den Borre, Partner Technical Sales Data & AI at IBM, went on stage to discuss the challenges of AI governance, highlighting the reasons why it is an important step to invest in and advising attending CIO on how and where to start. They emphasized the importance of transparency, compliance, and trust in AI.

A first round table interrupted the keynote sessions, gathering Kaisu Christie, CIO at EIB, Abraham Takom, CIO at Lombard International, Pascal Bughin, Directeur de la transformation, de l’IT et du digital at La Mondiale Europartner, Laurent Federspiel, Directeur Digital and Data at Ceratizit, and Yannick Bruck, CTO at Luxembourg Stock Exchange. Nicolas Griedlich, Partner, Consulting Digital and Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Data at Deloitte Luxembourg, moderated the discussion. They gave their thoughts in turn concerning their experiences with implementing AI and Data technologies in their respective businesses, as well as their viewpoints on the evolving landscape of these technologies and their impact on our everyday lives.

The debaters gave the floor to Raynald Bouchet, Senior Director at Denodo, who explained how to accelerate AI and Data initiatives with real time, trusted and governed data, without being delayed by the regulation. He was followed by a fireside chat between Ronan Vander Elst and Kurt Rommens, Public Segment Lead Belgium and Luxembourg at Google Cloud. Ronan Vander Elst asked Kurt Rommens about the sovereign cloud project set up in Belgium and Luxembourg by Google, Proximus, and LuxConnect, and the underlying technology, i.e. Google Distributed Cloud Hosted.

Emilie Allaert then brought on stage Casius Morea, CEO of EmailTree.ai, for a special announcement. On the day of the event, April 26th, the company indeed launched "knowledge.emailtree.ai", a new platform based on OpenAI and Microsoft technologies, offering a "ChatGPT like "experience" where human and AI converse with business applications".

Finally, the third edition of TechSense Summit ended with a second and last round table bringing together Marc Lemmer, Data Protection Commissioner at CNPD, Ananda Kautz, Head of Innovation, Digital and Payments & Member of the Management Board at ABBL, Christian Kremer, Senior Partner at Clifford Chance Luxembourg and Claude Marx, Director General at CSSF and moderator of the session. The panelists addressed the issue of "Regulating AI & Data Machine". They discussed the risks associated with AI and the need for proper regulation in this field. They shared their views on personal data protection, privacy concerns, and discussed the type of ecosystem that should be developed to favor the deployment of AI, especially in the financial services industry.