Global Summit XVII sponsorship
Support the JES's mission of fostering dialogue for the Erie region on a global level.
Our audiences continue to show up to explore critical topics—from politics and global affairs to cutting-edge science, technology, sports, and more. And thanks to our sponsors, we’ve kept ticket prices unchanged since day one, ensuring that access to these powerful learning experiences remains open to all.
This year, we kicked off this year’s Global Summit with President Barack Obama. We also welcomed renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback and community leader Jim Kelly, Vice President Mike Pence, and acclaimed historian Lindsay Chervinsky, plus many additional distinguished speakers who will engage and inspire audiences of all ages.
Whether you’ve sponsored the Global Summit before, supported other JES initiatives, or are considering a sponsorship for the first time, thank you for helping our community grow and thrive. Your support makes it possible for us to offer inclusive, high-quality programming that fosters civic engagement and civil dialogue—providing residents across Erie County with access to the ideas, conversations, and learning opportunities that matter most, especially in times when thoughtful public discourse is so urgently necessary.
If your organization is interested in becoming a Global Summit XVII sponsor, please contact Christine Gerlock by phone at 814-459-8000 or by email at gerlock@jeserie.org.
The Godfather of AI: Geoffrey Hinton on the New Frontier of Technology
Location: Gannon University Waldron Campus Center - 628 Peach St, Erie, PA 16501
Date/Time: Monday, October 5th 7:00-8:30pm
Admission: Early Bird Pricing - General Admission $25.75 / Preferred Seating $51.50
*If you do NOT receive an email from info@jeserie.org within 24-48 hours regarding your registration, please check your spam or junk folder. Thank you!
Geoffrey Hinton is the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence. Hinton has been called "the godfather of AI" and is considered one of the most important thought leaders on the emergence of AI and its implications for business and society. It was Hinton, in 2012, who created the technology that would become the foundation for the AI systems that are emerging as potential game-changers for business. But Hinton is not entirely a proponent of the rapid development of AI: Hinton's view is that the technology offers tremendous potential benefits to humankind, but we are at an important inflection point where society needs to think hard about how to restrict the use of AI to avoid potential pitfalls.
Hinton received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in 1978. After five years as a faculty member at Carnegie-Mellon he became a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and moved to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto where he is now an emeritus professor. He has also held roles as a VP Engineering fellow at Google and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Vector Institute.
Geoffrey Hinton was one of the researchers who introduced the backpropagation algorithm and the first to use backpropagation for learning word embeddings. His other contributions to neural network research include Boltzmann machines, distributed representations, time-delay neural nets, mixtures of experts, variational learning and deep learning. His research group in Toronto made major breakthroughs in deep learning that revolutionized speech recognition and object classification.
Geoffrey Hinton is a fellow of the UK Royal Society and a foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His awards include the Nobel Prize in Physics (2024), the David E. Rumelhart prize, the IJCAI award for research excellence, the Killam prize for Engineering, the IEEE Frank Rosenblatt medal, the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal, the IEEE James Clerk Maxwell Gold medal, the NEC C&C award, the BBVA award, the Honda Prize, and the Turing Award.
