As seems to be a recurring theme since we have arrived, this morning’s early start was accompanied by yet another fresh northern Californian drizzle. After a short tram ride down to the Embarcadero, we attended a panel discussion at swissnex about the contributions tech companies in the Valley can make to help with the ongoing global refugee crisis.
Instead of simply throwing money at the problem like many companies have been doing in recent decades, the idea behind this new wave of support is to leverage their core business expertise to provide assistance to refugee families. The offered support ranges anywhere from helping them get in touch with the local community in their new country to offering education to younger people who, in some cases, have been out of school for several years due to the situation in their home country.
Following this insightful hour and a half discussion, it was already time to hop back on the tram and head off to Berkeley for a tour of the world-renowned school that happened to be hosting its 2017 annual research symposium on the theme of AI and neural computation.