Nanotronics Manufacturing Summit 2023

Date: October 6th, 2023
Location: Building 20, Brooklyn Navy Yard

Nanotronics’ 2023 Manufacturing Summit will convene influential manufacturing experts, industry pioneers, thought leaders, academics, and key stakeholders for a cross-platform exchange to evaluate the most innovative technological achievements of today. A series of thought-provoking panels will delve deeper into the topics of Generative AI and manufacturing, as well as their contingent factors, with the sole mission of responsibly and efficiently shaping our industrial future.

The Summit provides a venue for essential discourse that challenges conventional narratives surrounding AI’s profound influence on contemporary society, as well as an opportunity for meaningful networking and inspired insights.

A highlight reel summarizing last year’s events can be found here.

Panel I: AI Ethics and Manufacturing: Harnessing the Power of New Intelligence

Generative AI has remained a popular subject of study and speculation amongst technical publications and the general populace alike for over a year. These systems have made considerable forays into artistic practice, music production, and other media, but their implications for the manufacturing sector remain largely untapped. Since the transition from mass production to precise, small-batch manufacturing, the integration of generative AI has demonstrated substantial effects on quality of output, factory control protocols, and general worker satisfaction. Combining software and hardware, new deep learning systems are able to take input data from sensors placed throughout a given plant and transform quantitative measurements into qualitative insights.

We are living in a world largely defined by the constant circulation of data—biometrics, social media feeds, and algorithmic cultures—and as data analysis tools, deep learning systems can anticipate potentially drastic errors or faults in production processes and adjust accordingly to avoid factory shutdown, making manufacturers less vulnerable to human fallibility. Many AI experts have emphasized that deep learning algorithms are not intended to replace humans or render their contributions obsolete, but act as auxiliaries to human capabilities; however, there are caveats to this approach. This panel asks participants to question the future of generative AI for manufacturing: is human creativity augmented as we continue to advance these apparatuses in their totality, and how do we devise a more meaningful understanding of their output? In what ways are they useful, in what ways do they present potential concerns, and how should they be regulated as well as denotated?

Panel II: The Search for Next-Generation Chips: History and Future of Semiconductor Architecture

Though the semiconductor chip shortage appears to have attenuated due in part to the distribution of government subsidies granted by the CHIPS Act, it has shed light on the weaknesses of a precarious supply chain structure, and the dangers of broad dependence on limited raw materials for chip manufacture. The ubiquity and necessity of chips became evident during their scarcity which has signaled a need for urgency in addressing potential issues, and mandates proactive measures to prevent future crises. It appears that Moore’s Law, the conjecture devised by computer scientist Gordon Moore in 1975, has reached the end of its pertinence. Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors placed on a semiconductor chip doubles approximately every two years, increasing the chip’s speed and energy capacity. However, chip area can no longer accommodate the addition of more transistors. Conventional chip architecture and materials, namely silicon and gallium nitride, are not capable of facilitating the rate at which new technologies are developing, primarily the hardware necessary to support more advanced AI systems. This panel proposes innovative alternatives to traditional methods: what is currently missing from modern devices, and in the wake of the CHIPS Act’s economic impact, how do we source, design, and fabricate the chips of the future?

Panel III: Electric Vehicles and Autonomous Control: Revolutionizing and Scaling Mobility Through AI

Perfecting the electric vehicle offers a solution to public outcry against fossil fuel-burning cars, and trends indicate that consumers are prioritizing greener alternatives as climate concerns continue to progress. As the EV gains traction in media outlets and grows in popularity, it is necessary to reverse engineer our understanding of how they function, taking a larger, seemingly impenetrable structure and collapsing it down to its fundamental elements in order to deduce how these elements engage causally with their environments to impact mobility on the grander scale. The integration of AI into EVs is transforming transportation infrastructure as well as its surrounding workforce, with specialized engineers and sensor-equipped EVs continuously collecting data from various environmental elements; this data includes information about road and weather conditions, traffic, and more key points that assist vehicle manufacturers in accelerating design iteration, improving driver safety, and enhancing customizable features, making the EV adaptable to meet individualized user needs. This panel assesses the synergy between AI and EVs to guide the development of the next generation of automobiles, aligning new models with the public’s demand for eco-friendly transportation.

Panel IV: Geopolitics and AI: Manufacturing for a Globalized World

As we have observed since the genesis of AI, algorithms have the property of informating what we consider mundane actions, rendering the otherwise invisible very visible. Data collected from everyday activity is now imbricated in market dynamics as well as matters of national security and geopolitical competition—information has become one of our most coveted currencies. Global superpowers are vying for informational hegemony, and generative AI’s presence permeates many structures; as highly potent tools for creating cogent but perhaps misleading media, these systems raise concerns about the proliferation of targeted disinformation that can be weaponized to advance particular agendas. What is immediately apparent to us may not reflect actuality, and populations are questioning the integrity of institutions, making it difficult to reinforce democratic values.

Given the volatile combination of threats to democracy, critical cyberattack vulnerability, and widespread reliance on condensed markets, it is necessary to address the current state of geopolitical relations alongside AI’s potential to transform them. As a method for gathering and circulating intelligence, generative AI has the ability to strengthen allyships between nation states or erode them; with resource limitations and the ongoing struggle for technological dominance, it is advantageous to enable global distribution of AI for manufacturing purposes. This discussion will explore the implications of one nation adopting another’s AI within a localized setting, replacing legacy equipment and enhancing knowledge repositories alongside data insights to fortify local autonomy while fostering global collaboration.

PANELISTS, PARTNERS, AND KEYNOTE SPEAKER TO BE ANNOUNCED