Event Summary

The Austin Forum invites you to attend a special screening of the PBS and Amazon Prime docuseries “Power Trip: The Story of Energy” featuring Season 2’s “SPACE” episode, which uncovers the profound relationship between space exploration and energy innovations. Dive into the story of how energy propels our dreams beyond Earth, making space travel possible and paving the way for future cosmic endeavors.

Following the screening stay for a panel discussion with  “Power Trip” author and energy expert, Dr. Michael E. Webber, “Power Trip” series director and Alpheus Media co-founder Mat Hames, and associate professor and space environmentalist, Dr. Moriba K. Jah, for a deeper conversation about energy and space.

Moderators

Mat Hames is an Emmy winning Director, known for his two feature length Independent Lens documentaries What Was Ours and When I Rise which premiered at SXSW, Hot Docs, and the Big Sky Documentary Festival and are now streaming on Prime Video and Apple TV. Mat’s directorial debut was Last Best Hope, a nationally broadcast PBS film about the Belgian Resistance and escape lines during WWII, for which he was knighted by Belgian King Albert II. He made the award winning documentary series Power Trip: The Story of Energy and A State of Mind on PBS. Additional films include the Robert Redford-narrated Fighting Goliath for SundanceTV, Art of Home (PBS Living Channel), a series of 10 documentaries with Rooster Teeth called RTDocs, and Emmy award winning film Fossil Country. He is co-founder of Austin based production company Alpheus Media.

​As Chief Scientist, Dr. Jah leads the technical vision for Privateer. Jah is a renowned space environmentalist and astrodynamicist specializing in space object detection, tracking, identification, and characterization, as well as spacecraft navigation. He is an associate professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is the holder of the Mrs. Pearlie Dashiell Henderson Centennial Fellowship in Engineering.

In almost 20 years of U.S. government service, Dr. Uzo-Okoro has developed several national space policies and contributed to over 60 NASA missions and programs – as an engineer, technical expert, manager, and executive – in space science and technology topics. At the White House, she leads the space, aeronautics, and manufacturing portfolios, and has released space policy on Earth Observations, Orbital Debris, LEO including Microgravity research, Space Weather, In-space Servicing Assembly and Manufacturing, Aeronautics, human exploration, and space science. Her 17-year engineering career spanned contributions to earth observations, planetary science, heliophysics, astrophysics, human exploration, and space communications missions, which represent over $9.2 Billion in total program value to NASA. She has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and three masters degrees in Space Systems, Space Robotics, and Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University (APL), MIT (the Media Lab), and Harvard University, respectively. She earned her doctorate degree in Aerospace Engineering from MIT. Her story is profiled in President George W. Bush’s book, Out of Many, One.

​Dr. Michael E. Webber is the Josey Centennial Professor in Energy Resources in the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and CTO of Energy Impact Partners, a $3 billion cleantech venture fund.

From September 2018 to August 2021, Webber was based in Paris, France where he served as the Chief Science and Technology Officer at ENGIE, a global energy & infrastructure services company with 170,000 employees worldwide. Webber’s expertise spans research and education at the convergence of engineering, policy, and commercialization on topics related to innovation, energy, and the environment. His book Power Trip: the Story of Energy was published in 2019 by Basic Books with an award-winning 6-part companion series that aired on PBS, Amazon Prime and AppleTV starting Earth Day 2020. The series had more than 7000 broadcasts in the United States and has been distributed in dozens of countries, ultimately reaching millions of viewers. He was selected as a Fellow of ASME (the American Society of Mechanical Engineers) and as a member of the 4th class of the Presidential Leadership Scholars, which is a leadership training program organized by Presidents George W. Bush and William J. Clinton.

​Webber has authored four full-length general interest books, created two interactive textbooks, written more than 500 publications, and been awarded 6 patents. He serves on the advisory board for Scientific American and GTI Energy (an industry consortium formerly known as the Gas Technology Institute). A successful entrepreneur, Webber was one of three founders in 2015 for an educational technology startup, DISCO Learning Media, which was acquired in 2018.  Webber holds a B.S. and B.A. from UT Austin, and M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.  He was honored as an American Fellow of the German Marshall Fund and an AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellow on four separate occasions by the University of Texas for exceptional teaching.

Event Summary

The 2013 movie “Her” is a wonderful science fiction movie about AI has evolved to the point of general intelligence, even sentience. There is no robotics in this AI movie—it is all about the powerful but human-like AI capabilities of his “OS.” “Her” is inspiring and thought-provoking but represents a reality still far away or possibly unattainable. And yet, on November 30, 2022—just 9 years after “Her”—ChatGPT emerged and suddenly everyone was talking about how it mimics conversation, can be trained on more data than any human could ever learn, etc. (Read our short interview with ChatGPT and you’ll see.) Coupled with AI technologies for turning text to voice and vice versa, one could imagine a verbal form of ChatGPT—and begin to wonder if “Her” is much closer than we thought!

Join us for a showing of “Her" followed by a Q&A session with AI experts, including natural language processing (NLP). They will answer your questions and will share their perspectives on the state and future of NLP and the possibility of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and sentience. The movie is still thought-provoking, and our panel will help us understand where we are with AI, where AI is headed, and how we might(?) get to “Her” capabilities.

Panelists

Seasoned technology leader with over 20 years of experience driving innovation and leading high-performance teams across AI/ML, software engineering, data science, and cybersecurity. 

Team lead strategic innovation partnerships. Working in enterprise-scale AI for the last two decades.

Johnny Rodriguez, Director of Innovation at Fresh Consulting, has over 18 years of experience in creating innovative products and experiences. He has a diverse background in AI/ML, Product & Interactive Design, Front-end Web & iOS Development, XR development, and AI product development. Currently leading Fresh Labs, Johnny and his team are exploring, testing, and pushing the boundaries of emerging technologies. During his tenure, he has deployed 20 products, patented Voice AI algorithms, and spearheaded cutting-edge tech projects. He is also the co-founder of Brancher.ai, a no-code platform that allows for the connection of AI models to build AI apps in minutes. Johnny is not only a tech innovator but also a multifaceted individual. He is a beatboxer, fluent in three languages, and enjoys spending time with his family and furry companions when not leading the charge at Fresh.

Aurora Quinn-Elmore is a cofounder of Metamorph AI, a consultancy that helps companies leverage the newest AI capabilities as part of their core product innovation and business operations (sales, customer support, legal services, etc). Aurora is an entrepreneur and product manager with over 7 years of experience leading cross-functional product development teams through user-centered product design, rapid prototyping, and experimentation.