LA is known as the land of storytellers, but when it comes to its own story, the entertainment business is still front and center. In fact, LA has been at the core of a flourishing AI scene for decades. Since the 1920s through today, elite mathematicians and engineers have been putting their knowledge to work for a multitude of industries such as health, aerospace, and media with relatively little visibility in the tech limelight.

Now, these industries are poised to bring together a convergence of knowledge across cutting edge technologies and LA may finally have its day in the spotlight as a focal point for cross-disciplinary innovation.

LAs history in technology has its roots in the aerospace world, where because of its perfect weather and vast open spaces, it became an ideal setting for the aerospace industry to plant its roots in the early 1900s. Companies like Douglas Aircraft and JPL were able to find multi-acre properties to test rockets and build large airfields.

The engineering know-how and nature of aviation work fueled the manufacturing sector in Southern California during WWII and eventually became the birthplace to the internet as we know it, when UCLA, funded by the Department of Defense, sent the first virtual message via ARPANET in the same year we first landed a man on the moon.

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Through busts and booms, engineering talent was both attracted to the area and nurtured at many well known and respected educational institutions such as Caltech, USC, and UCLA, helping to augment the labor pool as well as becoming important sources of R&D.

This engineering talent continued to extend its branches out into other industries, such as health and wellness which are natural extensions for a population already obsessed with youth, fitness and body perfection.

Today, LA sits as a unifying center for life sciences, entertainment, media, and aerospace with frontier technologies such as AI pushing innovation across these core industries and providing a platform for new discoveries, cures, and social interactions.

Dave Whelan, Chief Executive Officer of BioscienceLA believes diversity is LAs secret weapon when it comes to its potential to become the global epicenter for AI innovation. He notes LAs widely diverse diaspora, which makes it a perfect place to train AI.

The entire worlds global population resides in LA. If you look at AI for healthcare, you have the raw materials in patient and health data that provide the widest range of possibilities. Combine that with the mix of the creative workforce, diversity of economies, and SoCal mindset, all together making LA a prime center for innovation that has yet to rightly take its place in the sun when compared to the attention that Silicon Valley receives.

The AI opportunity to save lives is particularly meaningful, especially in todays pandemic times. How do we apply AI in a way that can help with early detection, identify clusters, sequence DNA, or source the right treatments? Many aspects of life sciences are computational, and mathematical biologists have been entrenched in LA for some time providing services such as computational epidemiology, which is a multidisciplinary field that leverages computer science and mathematics to understand the spread of diseases and other public health issues.

Brian Dolan, CEO, and Founder of VerdantAI who has his roots in statistical genetics and biomathematics has seen the converging evolution of the tech scene in LA and is actively committed to building out the AI ecosystem. His startup studio is focused on launching new AI companies into market and partnering with large enterprises to help them turn their data into products.

It's not hard to argue that now is the time to focus on the big problems, like COVID and climate change. We need curious, dedicated, intelligent people to take these things on, and Los Angeles certainly offers that kind of talent. Our innovation diversity goes beyond demographics and into industries, geographies, and even ecologies. No other city can really offer that.

Brians previous company Deep 6 AI applies artificial intelligence to the clinical trial process by finding patients for medical trials and getting life-saving cures to people more quickly. Today, Brian and his team at Verdant are incubating technologies to optimize carbon-neutral supply chain networks, leveraging advanced medical NLP technology to read medical texts to create precision digital health experiences, and working on a mental health solution aimed at addiction and recovery.

Building a thriving ecosystem takes time and imagination. AI is both a disruptive force and a major opportunity, but dispelling the myths around AI is important in order to map out its impact and full potential.

Ronni Kimm, founder of Collective Future uses future visioning to help bring outside perspectives into organizations. Future visioning is important for accelerating innovation as it provides the ability to respond to and proactively be part of the stories of change. Her design and innovation studio helps bring strategic transformation to companies from a top-down and bottom-up perspective.

Ronni Kim

Health sciences and life sciences have some of the most interesting challenges in the world but there are not enough stories to help people understand how powerful approaches such as predictive analytics in health science can dramatically impact successful organ transplants predict at-risk patient complications, says Ronni. I see storytelling as one of the most important aspects of accelerating technology, creating more stories around these incredible innovations is where LA can excel in building resilient ecosystems and bringing more of these technologies to market.

Today LA sits at the center of multiple industries, where talent pools cross-pollinate and inspire new ideas. Its diverse and colorful population offers data not readily available in other geographies, making it ideal for big data applications that leverage AI. Its educational institutions feed and train new labor pools and its proximity to creative fields inspires new ways to leverage technology in traditional industries.

Ideas such as bringing the spatial web to life, holograms to offer new methods of care, and digital twins to create cross reality environments are just some of the ideas coming to life in LA.

As technology continues to advance, be sure to be on the lookout for more stories about the rise and influence of AI across these massive industries.

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Storytelling & Diversity: The AI Edge In LA - Forbes