Welcome to the 14th edition of Smartspaces!

A health-tech heavy week + Yann LeCun (again!)

As 2023 draws to a close, this edition marks our penultimate newsletter for the year. We’ll be back next week with a recap of the year, some Smartspaces updates and recommendations!

If you’ve ever organized an event (excluding parties of course 🎉), you probably know the 2nd half of December is one of the worst times to get speakers.

But that doesn't mean the excitement has completely wound down. We're still geared up for some standout events next week, including another session with Yann LeCun, a true pioneer in AI. It's an opportunity not to be missed, even as we all enjoy a bit of holiday downtime 🙂 

(2 weeks in a row with one of the ‘Godfather’s of AI’ - we’ll have to see what Yoshua Bengio is up to next week 👀)

While there's growing concern and even a sense of nihilism about AI's risks among many, it's important to remember that there are positive strides being made, especially in healthcare.

This week Google released MedLM, a family of foundation models fine-tuned for healthcare industry use cases that has the potential to transform medical research and patient care.

It’s a health heavy week at Smartspaces and it’s inspiring to see how AI like MedLM (among other technologies like VR & AR) are opening new frontiers in healthcare, offering hope and practical solutions in a field where they're most needed.

Healthcare has long been ripe for disruption - in the US for example, healthcare accounts for 20% of the American economy but only 1 of the 100 largest public software companies in the world are healthcare companies (!)

In a small look ahead to next week: 2023 was all about AI (like all about AI). We liked this reviews of some general trends of the year and what they might mean for 2024. Check it out!

AI, and everything else by Benedict Evans, former partner a16z

Give us a follow on LinkedIn and X for more of our favorite year in reviews over the next couple weeks!

What’s New at smrtspace.xyz

• Add to Calendar Function: Now, you can sync events directly with your calendar.

As always, you can find the details and links to the events in our Highlighted Events section below👇 & 50+ additional upcoming events, indexed & enriched with contextual information about speakers and topics on smrtspace.xyz.

What’s up next week? 🌟 
_{The best events and why they matter!}