The technology conference promise is often that everything is converging. EmTech Future 2026 gave that idea a program of its own, with sessions on how AI, quantum computing, energy, robotics and other fields may shape one another. The complete three-day event is now available on demand.
AI beyond the screen
Yossi Matias, vice president and head of Google Research, examined AI’s growing links with biology, infrastructure, manufacturing and science. The session’s premise is that AI’s larger effects may come not from the technology acting alone, but from its connections to other fields.
Cory Doctorow, a bestselling author and award-winning writer, addressed a different part of the AI debate: how the technology is changing the way people work and think. The program description offers that broad question rather than a single answer, which is probably appropriate for a subject that has yet to settle into a job description.
Quantum and energy in context
Hartmut Neven, founder and lead at Google Quantum AI, explored quantum computing alongside other technological frontiers. The session considered why quantum’s significance may depend partly on how it interacts with surrounding systems, not only on its standalone capabilities.
Evelyn Wang, MIT’s vice president for energy and climate, focused on connections among energy, computing, infrastructure and climate technologies. The discussion considered what those links could mean for industry and society.
The lineup also covered robotics, new energy systems and the challenges and opportunities that arise when technologies converge. Taken together, the sessions frame the event around relationships between technologies, rather than treating each field as a separate island. That is a neat organizing idea, even if the work of making systems cooperate is rarely neat.
Access to the program
The full EmTech Future 2026 program, including its conversations and sessions, is available on demand. Subscribers receive a 20 percent discount, bringing the price to $596.
The useful question running through the program is not simply what each technology can do. It is what changes when it meets the systems around it, where the most consequential possibilities, and the most awkward practical questions, tend to appear.
Sources
- EmTech Future 2026: When AI Meets Everything — MIT Technology Review