Nvidia Cancels Israel AI Summit Over Safety Concerns

Nvidia was due to hold a two-day AI Summit in Israel in a week’s time, but the event has now been cancelled due to concerns for the safety and wellbeing of participants.

Your local / national current affairs media will probably offer more thorough coverage of the tragic situation in Israel, but at the time of writing the Israeli death toll from Hamas attacks has risen to 600, with 2,000+ injured, and 100+ hostages taken. Retaliatory Israeli airstrikes have killed 370 people, with 2,200 injured, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry.

One of the hottest trends in computing today is AI, and businesses involved are riding the wave like some rode the crypto wave a few years ago. Nvidia’s AI Summit was scheduled for October 15-16, at EXPO Tel Aviv. Many AI hardware and software researchers and developers are located in Israel, and thousands more planned to visit to “unlock new skills, discover the latest in accelerated computing, and redefine what tomorrow will bring.”

The AI Summit was to begin with a keynote by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. In the conference FAQ Nvidia reminded interested parties that the AI Summit was an in-person, not online, event. After the opening keynote, there was a busy schedule of conference sessions and workshops that people could pick and choose from. Topics covered a broad range of AI applications like Generative AI, Healthcare, Large Language Models, Cybersecurity, Robotics, Omniverse, Autonomous vehicles, and more.

If you head on over to the main page for the Nvidia AI Summit today, you will be directed to a plain-looking message underlining Nvidia’s decision to cancel the event.

Nvidia says it regrets the cancellation, but sees it as the only choice for the “safety and wellbeing of our participants.” There is no word about whether the AI Summit could go virtual / online, and it is certainly too early to talk about a possible rescheduling of the in-person event.