Tanmay Bakshi, Keynote speaker on AI and the future of work
He builds the AI he talks about.
AI architect at IBM and Google Developer Expert. On stages in 30+ countries since his first keynote at nine.
- Years on stage
- 13+
- People reached live
- 400K+
- Countries
- 30+
- YouTube subscribers
- 324K
- Published books
- 4
Has spoken forUnited Nations (ITU) · TED · IBM · Google · Apple · Microsoft · nasscom · KPMG · Deloitte · SAP · Walmart · HSBC · BMO · Linux Foundation · WeAreDevelopers · Institute of Internal Auditors
Right now
What he is working on.
nasscom People Summit, 2026 At IBM
Agents, and who answers for them.
As an AI and software architect, his focus is autonomous agents: systems handed real work, and who owns a decision one of them made alone.
The talk on it
Teaching machine learning, with Pepper On his channel
Model internals, in real code.
Self-attention, JAX, CUDA and LLVM, taught at full length rather than summarised. The newest:
- Finding Timestamps in Audio Transcripts by Probing IBM Granite Speech14:18
- Hierarchical Reasoning Model - Next-Gen Neural Problem Solving34:28
- Why does OpenAI have the best LLMs?19:24
ABP InfoCom, Hyderabad, 2026 On stage
Telling CIOs to stop building agents.
At ABP InfoCom in Hyderabad his talk for CIOs was titled Please stop building AI agents; at nasscom People Summit it was governing the ones you have.
Every talk
Invited back
nasscom, nine years apart: his 2026 People Summit keynote, and the 2017 keynote that played on the screen behind him.
How he thinks
One level deeper.
“Drop a couple levels of abstraction and usually ten different problems end up being the same problem wearing ten different disguises.”
- Governing the second workforce“There's no second workforce here.”The twist ending of that keynote: AI agents amplify the workforce you already have. Accountability, and care, stay human.For people and business leaders
AI in enterprises: a new way of workAdoption waits for a threshold.Few people switch while a tool is merely improving; most switch once it beats the old way. If your people aren't using AI, first ask whether it makes their work easier yet.For CIOs and technology leaders
What AI means for people“More work worth doing, not less.”He built AutoLyricist to help songwriters past writer's block. Country artist Claudia Hoyser's first reaction was no way. Her verdict after writing with it: an open-minded co-writer.For students, educators and public audiences- Demystifying AI, hands-on“Machine learning isn't magic. It's math.”The same math that pinpoints your phone on a map trains today's AI. He teaches it from first principles, often with Pepper, a humanoid robot, taking the audience's questions.For students, developers and technical teams
The engagement
What booking him actually looks like
Three minutes of one engagement, start to finish: the room going up, meeting the hosts, the stage, and the group photo at the end.
On the record
Watch him work.
Full talks, not clips.
On stage
Every kind of room.
His first keynote was at nine. Thirteen years on, the rooms keep getting bigger: a UN conference, auditors in Las Vegas, engineering students in Bhopal, CIOs in Hyderabad.
Hyderabad, IndiaABP InfoCom, 2026For CIOs: Please stop building AI agents 
Bengaluru, Indianasscom People Summit, 2026Governing the Second Workforce 
Waterloo, CanadaGoogle DevFest, 2024Opening keynote 
Riyadh, Saudi ArabiaGlobal AI Summit, 2022Connecting the Disconnected 
Doha, QatarWISE Summit, 2021World Innovation Summit for Education 
Lisbon, PortugalBuilding the Future, 2020Culture and new competences of the future 
Vienna, AustriaWeAreDevelopers Congress, 2019Opening keynote on machine learning 
Las Vegas, USAInstitute of Internal Auditors, 2019Closing keynote: quantum computing, for auditors 
Munich, GermanyBits & Pretzels, 2018Machine learning in healthcare, finance and beyond 
Reykjavík, IcelandUTmessan, 2018AI and the Fourth Industrial Revolution 
Gold Coast, AustraliaKPMG Australia, 2018Machine learning in auditing, cybersecurity and finance 
Bhopal, IndiaRajiv Gandhi Technological University, 2018Keynote for a packed hall of engineering students 
Monterrey, MexicoINCmty, 2017Building technology that scales with AI 
Buenos Aires, ArgentinaUnited Nations ITU conference, 2017Keynote on AI and digital transformation 
San Francisco, USATED@IBM, 2017Technology that tackles the teen suicide epidemic 
Cincinnati, USATEDxCincinnati, 2017Connecting the disconnected with AI Bengaluru, Indianasscom Big Data and Analytics Summit, 2017Opening keynote 
Vancouver, CanadaBC Tech Summit, 2017Keynote on AI and cognitive computing 
Dubai, UAESME Beyond Borders, 2017AI and machine learning for small businesses 
Auckland, New ZealandThe AM Show, 2017Live television interview 
London, UKApple UK headquarters, 2016Keynote for Apple Distinguished School leaders
Photographs: GDG Waterloo, INCmty, nasscom, ABP InfoCom and Moe Asrar (Winnipeg). Other images are stills from event recordings and broadcasts.
About
He grew up inside this field.
Tanmay Bakshi is an AI and software architect at IBM and a Google Developer Expert for machine learning. He has written four books for Manning, Packt and McGraw Hill, and 324,000 people subscribe to the channel where he teaches model internals in real code.
He gave his first keynote at nine, in 2013, and was building with machine learning years before AI was a boardroom topic. Since then: TED@IBM, a United Nations ITU conference in Buenos Aires, the nasscom main stage, and rooms in more than 30 countries.
His work now is on autonomous agents: what happens when systems act on their own, and who is accountable when one is wrong. That is what he brought to INFOCOM Hyderabad and People Summit Bengaluru in 2026.
“AI doesn't write people out of the story. It raises the ceiling on what we can do.”
The person building with these systems at IBM, explaining what they mean for the people in your audience. Every talk is written for your theme and your room.
Questions
What organisers ask.
AI and what it changes for the people who have to work with it. Four areas in particular: AI that augments people rather than replacing them, governing autonomous agents, telling genuine shifts apart from hype, and AI applied to human problems in health, mental health and accessibility. Every talk is shaped around the event's theme rather than delivered off the shelf.
Industry conferences, corporate and leadership events, developer and open source events, and universities. He has opened conference main stages such as INFOCOM Hyderabad and the nasscom Big Data and Analytics Summit, spoken at TED@IBM and TEDxCincinnati, keynoted the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit North America, and run sessions for university developer communities.
Send the date through the booking page, or email tanmay@asktanmay.com, with the event and who is in the room. Availability comes back first, before fee or format, so you know quickly whether to keep him on your shortlist.
Yes, and he does both. Corporate and leadership audiences usually want the accountability and the signal versus hype material. University and developer audiences usually want the technical work and the career path. The talk is built differently for each.
Every talk is on the Talks page, each one dated and linked to the full recording, including the TED@IBM talk and a 2026 conference keynote. The reel and the wider video library are under Videos, and more sessions are on his YouTube channel at @tanmayteaches.
Organiser testimonials are not published yet. What is on the record: The AM Show in New Zealand called him the smartest guest they had ever had, and the country artist Claudia Hoyser called his AutoLyricist an open-minded co-writer. The Talks page links every talk in full and names the event that booked him.
Bring Tanmay to your stage.
Send a date. He answers himself, availability first.