Ten questions for Manuela Dias de Deus, summit director of AI Empowered

Let’s start with the big question: What is the AI Empowered Summit and why does the world need it now?

AI Empowered, inspired by EO Cape Town is where the future gets personal. It’s not just about big, abstract tech ideas and how AI affects your business, it also looks at how it impacts you as an individual, a leader or a creator.

AI is in our homes, it’s changing our jobs, influencing our finances and enabling our health decisions. But the conversation has been dominated by experts and tech insiders, leaving the rest of us a bit overwhelmed and scrambling to catch up.

This summit is about closing that gap. It’s about inspiring us, giving us the tools, insights and confidence to engage with AI in real, tangible ways. We need it now because AI is shaping our lives, whether we’re ready or not.

There’s no shortage of AI summits happening globally. What sets AI Empowered apart?

It’s all about the programme curation. So many AI summits feature the same voices saying the same things, often high-level, jargon-heavy and not particularly useful. We wanted to break that mould.

We’ve carefully crafted a learning experience that brings in a diverse range of voices, from entrepreneurs who have used AI to 10x their businesses (and are willing to share the lessons they learnt the hard way), to creatives who have embraced AI to gain back time, educators, policymakers and even experts in health and wellness.

It’s not just about what AI can do, it’s about what it can do for you, right now, and in the years to come. Whether you’re just starting out or already fully implementing, you’ll walk away with a forward-looking perspective that extends to 2027, 2030 and beyond. 

This programme is loaded. If you could only attend one day or one session, which would you choose, and why?

It’s impossible to choose! And we’ve designed the programme so that you don’t have to. Tickets are for both days, because we want people to get the most out of it.

We’ve split the two days into overarching themes to make it easier to navigate across AI in business and AI in everyday life.

Day 1 is all about business: Strategy. People and recruitment. Sales. Marketing. Finance. Creativity. Ops.

Day 2 dives into AI and education, climate, travel, health and wellness, ethics and fraud. It unpacks the societal implications of AI, with some challenging conversations.


Day 1 closes with Steven Sidley, professor of practice, JBS, University of Johannesburg, and his talk, “We’re all gonna die: Unravelling the utopian vs dystopian prognoses for artificial intelligence”. With a title like that, you can’t miss it!

Day 2 closes with Emma Sadleir, founder and CEO of the Digital Law Company. She’ll talk about deepfakes, AI hallucinations and the legal and ethical considerations when using AI.

Who are a few standout speakers or sessions you think will surprise or challenge the audience? 

Personally, I’m keen to hear Karen Allen, journalist and founder at Karen Allen International, and Chris Roper, senior strategist at Code for Africa and former editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian and 24.com, explore the role of truth, journalism and identity in the age of artificial intelligence.

Kabelo Makwane, country director at Google, and Tamir Kessel, climate tech entrepreneur and former executive at Google, are sure to be impressive!

For those looking for something a little more provocative, author Siya Khumalo offers his take on AI’s influence on society and markets, drawing on history, politics and mythology to unpack how God-like technologies reveal human nature, and how we can navigate the risks more wisely.

The legal industries have been hugely impacted by AI. A conversation that’s unmissable is “The AI-Driven Future of Law” between Yvonne Wakefield, chief executive at Caveat, and Kyle Torrington, co-founder and director at the law firm Taylor Torrington and Associates.

Matthias Bellmann (Bavaria), CEO of Passion.io, would be a great one to watch. His talk about “How I generated $50-million on social media without showing my face” is aimed at large companies that struggle with marketing and want to resolve that in the era of social media and AI. 

Jos Dirkx (Netherlands), global AI strategist, bestselling author, Top 100 Women in AI and inventor, will speak about education, specifically on how schools and institutions are already reimagining the future of learning through human-AI collaboration.

The panel on AI in retail will be fascinating, as we’ll have CTOs and speakers from Woolworths, Pepkor IT, AWS and Shoprite.

The summit will be opened by Western Cape premier Alan Winde.

A lot of professionals still feel like AI isn’t ‘for them’. How are you designing this summit to be welcoming beyond the tech crowd?

That’s a huge priority for us.

Our speakers will be presenting real-world case studies, we’ve curated plain-language panels and have included hands-on sessions that show how AI can be practically applied in everyday business. 

We’ve deliberately designed the content to speak to business owners, creatives, strategists and decision-makers, not just data scientists. This summit is about demystifying AI and making it accessible, useful and exciting for everyone.

This summit isn’t about coding or algorithms, it’s about how AI shows up in your business, your decision-making, your life.

What’s the conversation around ethics and responsibility going to look like at the summit? Are we ready to talk about the darker side of AI?

Absolutely. We believe you can’t have a meaningful conversation about AI without addressing ethics, bias, privacy and power. The summit includes a dedicated focus on responsible AI, with speakers who aren’t afraid to ask the hard questions: Who benefits? Who’s being left out? What are the unintended consequences?

The ethics of AI are central to the future we’re building, and this summit is a platform to start those urgent, sometimes uncomfortable, conversations.

From your perspective, what’s the biggest misconception South Africans have about AI right now?

In my view, the biggest misconceptions are that AI is either a threat to all jobs or a luxury reserved for large global companies, and neither is entirely true. The conversation around work and AI is far more nuanced.

I was recently chatting to one of our speakers, Valter Adão, a faculty member at Singularity University, who highlighted a growing anxiety in corporate South Africa: “If I modernise my business, am I making the unemployment crisis worse?” It’s a valid concern, but it’s also where we need to reframe the conversation.

We don’t believe jobs will simply disappear. In fact, we believe AI will create new types of jobs, and more importantly, open up employment opportunities for people who might not have had access before. The technology has the potential to skill people up faster and lower traditional barriers to entry.

So, the real questions we should be asking, according to Valter, are: “How do we stay on the right side of change? And how do we use this shift to address South Africa’s high levels of unemployment?”

AI can be part of the solution, if we’re intentional about inclusion.

Valter is talking on Thursday, 7 August on the panel “People: Workforce 2.0”.

The PwC “Value in Motion” report puts South Africa’s AI opportunity at R129-billion by 2030. Where do you think the real traction could come from?

The opportunity is massive, but it won’t materialise without action. I think the real traction will come from sectors where AI can solve real, local problems at scale. Think healthcare, education, agriculture and logistics, areas where we face serious gaps, and where AI can drive access, efficiency and innovation.

But beyond sectors, I think the magic lies in our entrepreneurial ecosystem. South Africans are natural problem-solvers. If we empower SMEs and start-ups with the right tools and support, they’ll unlock use cases we haven’t even imagined yet, ones that are both commercially viable and socially impactful.

Who should be in the room for this? Who are you hoping shows up, and why?

I’d love to see decision-makers, business owners and their teams. It’s all very good to book a ticket to be inspired by thought leadership, but there are also practical courses, so bring your marketers, your HR leads – anyone in your business who’s curious or hungry to learn.

This is for people who want to lead the change.

For anyone still undecided about attending, what’s your message?

AI is everywhere, and whether you’re trying to get ahead of it or just make sense of it, the noise is real. This is one place to cut through the hype. One summit where you could explore how AI is transforming your business, your career and your life.

This is your chance to understand what’s coming, what’s already here and how to make AI work for you, not against you.

Of course, it’s a great place to network too, with members from the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, journalists from Daily Maverick and CapeTalk, and stakeholders from Invest Cape Town, the City of Cape Town, IAB and FNB. We’ll see you there! 

For more information visit AI Empowered for updates. DM

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