Michal Valko : Talks

Upcoming talks

October 13, 2026, 10:00-12:00
Gymnázium, Park mládeže 5 AI Ate My Homework (and Then Hallucinated the Answer) Košice, Slovakia
October 13, 2026, 15:30-17:00
Invited seminar at UPJŠ Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University (UPJŠ), Jesenná 5, room SJ1S24, Košice, Slovakia
October 13, 2026, 18:00
AI PUNK Meetup AI bubble: does it even exist? Tabačka Kulturfabrik, Košice, Slovakia
October 16, 2026, 09:00-19:00
Centre Jean Gol China Conference SQUARE Brussels, Mont des Arts, Brussels, Belgium
October 19-20, 2026
Frontier Summit Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

2027

2026

  • Agentic AI (panel) - AI Frontiers Summit 2026, MBZUAI, December 12, 2026, Châteauform' City Les Jardins de Saint Dominique, Paris, France (AI Frontiers Summit 2026)
  • LIB CON Prague (keynote + panel discussion), December 3, 2026, Prague, Czechia (Czech Librarians 2026)
  • StRICt Workshop: Structured Reasoning for Interpretability and Control (keynote), December 2026, NeurIPS 2026, Paris, France (StRICt @ NeurIPS 2026)
  • Connecting Humanity and Artificial Intelligence: A Future Built on Values (panel) - Slovak Telekom AI & Humanity, November 26, 2026, Stará tržnica, Bratislava, Slovakia (AI & Humanity SK 2026)
  • Night of Chances IT (keynote), November 25, 2026, Bratislava, Slovakia (Night of Chances IT 2026)
  • Artificial intelligence: economic potential and the future of business and competitiveness (panel) - Prosperity Through Freedom: Return of the Tatra Tiger, Slovak Students For Liberty, November 21, 2026, Bratislava, Slovakia (Slobodou k prosperite 2026)
  • Global Robotics and AI Meet (keynote), November 19-21, 2026, Osaka, Japan (RoboticsAI 2026)
  • Slush Lapland Trip (Visionaries) (invited), November 15-17, 2026, Lapland, Finland (Polaris 2026)
  • Brown University Robotics and Physical AI Event (invited), November 12, 2026, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States (Brown Robotics and Physical AI 2026)
  • The Dot 2026, Swiss Re Slovakia (keynote), November 12, 2026, Stará tržnica, Bratislava, Slovakia (The Dot 2026)
  • The State of AI Research: Breakthroughs, Limits, and Controversies (panel) - BigHub AI Conference, November 4, 2026, Microsoft HQ, Prague, Czechia (BigHub AI Conference 2026)
  • AI2FUTURE 2026 (invited talk), October 28-29, 2026, Kraš Auditorium, Ravnice 48, Zagreb, Croatia (AI2FUTURE Zagreb 2026)
  • DTIT 20th Anniversary Event (invited panel), October 27, 2026, Theatre in Košice, Slovakia (DTIT 2026)
  • Building and Scaling European Models (panel) - NVIDIA Startup Day Berlin, alongside NVIDIA GTC Berlin, October 20, 2026, Berlin Marriott, Berlin, Germany (NVIDIA Startup Day / GTC Berlin 2026)
  • Frontier Summit (invited), October 19-20, 2026, Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (Frontier Summit 2026)
  • China: Partner, Competitor, or Enemy of the EU? (invited) - Centre Jean Gol China Conference, October 16, 2026, 09:00-19:00, SQUARE Brussels, Mont des Arts, Brussels, Belgium (CJG China 2026)
  • AI bubble: does it even exist? (keynote + moderated discussion) - AI PUNK Meetup, October 13, 2026, 18:00, Tabačka Kulturfabrik, Košice, Slovakia (AI PUNK 2026)
  • Invited seminar at UPJŠ (invited seminar), October 13, 2026, 15:30-17:00, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University (UPJŠ), Jesenná 5, room SJ1S24, Košice, Slovakia (UPJŠ 2026)
  • AI Ate My Homework (and Then Hallucinated the Answer) (guest lecture) - Gymnázium, Park mládeže 5, October 13, 2026, 10:00-12:00, Košice, Slovakia (Gymnázium Park mládeže 2026)
  • World Models for Turbines (invited talk) - Solar Turbines Digital AI Team, October 8, 2026, 10:45-12:15, Solar Turbines EAME Ltd., Za Ženskými domovy 3379, Praha 5-Smíchov, Czechia (Solar Turbines 2026)
  • How to Train Your AI (Without Letting It Copy Your Homework) (school talk) - Gymnázium Evolution Jižní Město, October 7, 2026, 09:25-11:00, Gymnázium Evolution Jižní Město, Prague, Czechia (Evolution Kids AI 2026)
  • AI, Innovation & Economy - New Challenges in Central Banking Conference, October 6, 2026, 15:50, Czech National Bank Congress Centre, Prague, Czechia (CNB 2026)
  • A Thousand Lakes, One Latent World: Why AI Needs World Models (invited lecture) - FR8 Cohort 2.f, October 5, 2026, 11:45-12:30, Helsinki, Finland (FR8 World Models 2026)
  • LLMs in the Sauna: What Survives the Heat? (invited lecture) - FR8 Cohort 2.f, October 5, 2026, 11:00-11:45, Helsinki, Finland (FR8 LLMs 2026)
  • The Future of AGI / ASI (invited) - FR8 Cohort 2.f, October 2, 2026, 18:00-19:00, Helsinki, Finland (FR8 Cohort 2.f 2026)
  • Tencent Hunyuan LLM Research, October 2026, Online (Tencent Hunyuan 2026)
  • Reasoning, Post-Training and the Next Generation of LLMs (invited) - Guest lecture at FIIT STU, October 2026, Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies, Slovak University of Technology (FIIT STU), Bratislava, Slovakia (FIIT STU 2026)
  • When AI Learns to Tie Its Shoes: A Future Beyond LLMs (invited) - adidas AI, September 30, 2026, adidas World of Sports, Herzogenaurach, Germany (adidas AI 2026)
  • European LLMs and AI Sovereignty (invited) - European Union Committee, September 29, 2026, Brussels, Belgium (European Forum 2026)
  • European Commission JRC Disinformation Workshop, September 25, 2026, JRC Ispra, Italy (JRC Disinfo 2026)
  • European Researchers' Night: The Power of Science - How We Can Shape Our Future, September 25, 2026, Slovakia (NOC 2026)
  • AI ON TAP - Creandum x BOOOM Oktoberfest (invited), September 24, 2026, Schützen-Festzelt, Munich, Germany (AI ON TAP 2026)
  • When AI Connects the Dots: The Future Beyond LLMs - Future Week 26, September 24, 2026, Atlantis, Media City Bergen, Bergen, Norway (Future Week 2026)
    Future Week 2026
  • AI Horizons 2026 (invited), September 23-24, 2026, CUBEX, Prague, Czechia (AI Horizons 2026)
  • LIX Colloquium (colloquium), September 21, 2026, LIX, École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France (LIX Colloquium 2026)
  • Game-theoretic alignment and reinforcement learning for LLMs (invited) - ACE Talk Series, Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), September 17, 2026, 16:30-17:30 Beijing time, Microsoft Research Asia, online (MSRA ACE Talk 2026)
  • Nash and Nemirovski walk into a bar: LLM alignment with mirror descent and proximal methods - Machine Learning in Nonstandard Settings, September 8, 2026, 09:35-10:25, La Villa Clythia, Fréjus, France (ML Nonstandard 2026)
  • Statistical AI Workshop, August 24-28, 2026, TSIMF, Sanya, China (TSIMF StatAI 2026)
  • Genesis of World Models via Curiosity and Prediction (keynote) - BOLD and Friends, BOLD Launch Festival, August 4, 2026, Rhodes House, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom (BOLD Festival 2026)
  • Invited talk at Armenia LLM Summer School, August 3-7, 2026, AI9 Startup Campus, Yerevan, Armenia (ARMLLM 2026)
  • Opportunities in Fundamental AI (keynote + panel) - BOLD Launch Festival, Session 3, August 3-4, 2026, The Examination Schools, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom (BOLD Festival 2026)
  • Goanna Builders Day (panel), July 24, 2026, Fort Mason, San Francisco, California (Goanna Builders Day 2026)
  • RAISE Summit 2026 (invited), July 8-9, 2026, Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France (RAISE Summit 2026)
  • Independence Day: 250th Anniversary of the Founding of the United States of America (invited), July 4, 2026, Galéria Umelka, Bratislava, Slovakia (Independence Day 2026)
  • Talk at Krafton AI (invited), July 2, 2026, Seoul, South Korea (Krafton AI 2026)
  • Invited talk in Seoul (invited), July 2, 2026, Centerfield WEST, Seoul, South Korea (Seoul 2026)
  • Global AI Show: AI 2030 - Accelerating Intelligent Futures, June 29-30, 2026, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (Global AI Show 2026)
  • High-Level Event on Democracy (keynote) - European Commission Joint Research Centre, June 25, 2026, Brussels, Belgium (EC Democracy 2026)
  • SKAI Conference (invited), June 23, 2026, Vodárenské múzeum, Bratislava, Slovakia (SKAI 2026)
  • International Summer School on Generative AI, June 22-26, 2026, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy (GenAI Summer School 2026)
  • Critical Ventures Ecosystem Summit 2026 (keynote), June 21-22, 2026, Lisbon, Portugal (Critical Ventures 2026)
  • From Chatbots to Agents: How AI Changes Decision-Making, Work, and Control (invited), June 18, 2026, Crowne Plaza, Bratislava, Slovakia (Spring ITAPA 2026)
    Video: From Chatbots to Agents: How AI Changes Decision-Making, Work, and Control
  • Orange Business Conference, June 17, 2026, Bratislava, Slovakia (Orange Biz 2026)
    Video: Orange Business Conference
  • AI Day 2, June 15, 2026, ZŠ Valaliky, Slovakia (online) (AI Day ZŠ 2026)
  • World Models - Reinforcement Learning Summer School (RLSS), June 11, 2026, 14:00-15:30, Milan, Italy (RLSS World Models 2026)
  • Reinforcement Learning and LLMs - Reinforcement Learning Summer School (RLSS), June 11, 2026, 09:00-10:30, Milan, Italy (RLSS 2026)
  • Advanced Course on Data Science & Machine Learning, June 8-12, 2026, Castiglione della Pescaia, Tuscany, Italy (ACDL 2026)
  • GLOBSEC Forum 2026 (panel), May 21-23, 2026, Prague, Czechia (GLOBSEC 2026)
  • How Large Language Models Learn to Reason - Giorgi Nikoladze Scientific Research Center Seminar, Kutaisi International University, May 19, 2026, Kutaisi, Georgia (KIU 2026)
  • Rhizome Seminar, May 13, 2026, Paris, France (Rhizome 2026)
  • Artificial Intelligence + Quantum Conference, May 11-12, 2026, Kunsthalle, Košice, Slovakia (AI+Q 2026)
  • GHOST Day: Applied Machine Learning Conference, May 8-9, 2026, Poznań, Poland (GHOST Day 2026)
  • Slovak Oxford Science Conference 2026 (invited talk), April 29 - May 2, 2026, Payerbacherhof, Payerbach, Austria (SOSC 2026)
  • IT/AI Night, April 28, 2026, STU, Bratislava, Slovakia (IT/AI Night 2026)
  • Where Are Humans Still Better Than AI? Michal Valko on Uncertainty and the Future of Technology (invited), April 27, 2026, KInIT (Kempelen Institute), Bratislava, Slovakia (KInIT Human-vs-AI 2026)
  • Invited talk at KInIT: what is new in our research, April 27, 2026, KInIT (Kempelen Institute), Bratislava, Slovakia (KInIT 2026)
  • The Genesis of Predictive Architectures (keynote) - AI Day, April 23, 2026, FMUK, Bratislava, Slovakia (AI Day 2026)
    Video: The Genesis of Predictive Architectures
  • LEAF Academy (invited talk), April 14, 2026, Bratislava, Slovakia (LEAF 2026)
  • Junior Internet AMAVET 2026, April 10-11, 2026, FIIT STU, Bratislava, Slovakia (Junior Internet 2026)
  • FR8 (keynote), April 3-10, 2026, Long TCV, Finland (FR8 2026)
  • Statlearn 2026, April 1-3, 2026, Grenoble, France (Statlearn 2026)
  • Challenges of Modern Psychiatry 2026, March 20, 2026, Hotel Bjornsonka, Jasná, Slovakia (Psychiatry 2026)
  • Seine Technology Summit 2026 (keynote), March 10-11, 2026, Dolce Versailles, Jouy-en-Josas, France (Seine Tech Summit 2026)
  • Math and AI for high school students, March 9, 2026, České Reálné Gymnázium, České Budějovice, Czech Republic (ČRG 2026)
  • Speedy RL & LLMs (invited lecture) - Cerebras AI, February 26, 2026, Sunnyvale, CA, USA (Cerebras 2026)
  • The Genesis of Predictive Architectures: How AI Can Extract Meaning from Unlabeled Data - CIDS Colloquium, New York University Abu Dhabi, January 27, 2026, Abu Dhabi, UAE (NYUAD CIDS 2026)
  • Machines Can Think - AI Adopters Summit (keynote), January 26-27, 2026, Abu Dhabi, UAE (MCT 2026)

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

  • Bootstrap your own latent - DataFest Yerevan, September 11, 2021 (DataFest 2021)
  • Bootstrapped representation learning on graphs - Turkey Machine Learning Summer School, June, 23 2021, Science Academy of Turkey (BAYÖYO 2021)
    Video: Bootstrapped representation learning on graphs
  • Self-supervised learning, BYOL, and friends - DeepMind Theory meets Practice, 2021, London, UK (DeepMind TmP 2021)
  • Graphs in Machine Learning - Medical University Graz, Austria, June 2021 (HCAI 2021)
  • Bootstrap Your Own Latent: A new approach to self-supervised learning - MIST conference in Rajecká Lesná, January, 2021 (MIST 2021)

2020

2019

  • Graphs are the new gold: The power of graphs in speeding up online learning and decision making - Global Innovation Forum, October 16-18, 2019, Yerevan, FAST, Armenia (GIF 2019)
  • Gaussian process optimization with adaptive sketching: Scalable and no regret - Recent developments in kernel methods, September 26-27, 2019, UCL, London, UK (Gatsby 2019)
  • Rotting bandits are not harder than stochastic ones - Lancaster and DeepMind Bandit Workshop, September 25-26, 2019, London, UK (LanDeep 2019)
  • Graphs are the new gold: The power of graphs in speeding up online learning and decision making - Cisco, July 23, 2019, Kraków, Poland (Cisco 2019)
  • How the negative dependence broke the squadratic barrier for learning with graphs and kernels - Yandex HQ, July 5, 2019, Moscow, Russia (Yandex 2019)
  • Active multiple matrix completion with adaptive confidence sets - RAAI Summer School 2019, July 3-8, 2019, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (RAAI 2019)
    Video: Active multiple matrix completion with adaptive confidence sets
  • Maximum likelihood estimation for low rank DPPs - ICML workshop on negative dependence, June 14-15, 2019, Long Beach, USA (ICML 2019 DPPs)
  • How the negative dependence broke quadratic barrier for learning with graphs and kernels. - ICML workshop on negative dependence, June 14-15, 2019, Long Beach, USA (ICML 2019)
  • Optimal bandit submodular minimization - ICML 2019 workshop, June 9-15, 2019, Long Beach, USA (ICML 2019 submod)
  • Active block-matrix completion with adaptive confidence sets - Theoretical Computer Science seminar, May 28, 2019, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia (CU May 2019)
  • 10 year road to breaking the quadratic barrier for graphs and matrices - Theoretical Computer Science seminar, February 22, 2019, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia (CU Feb 2019)
  • Graphs are the new gold - Data Analytics Meetings, February 20, 2019, P.J. Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia (UPJS 2019)
  • The power of graphs in speeding up online learning and decision making - Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, January 25, 2019, University of Cambridge, UK (Cambridge 2019)
  • The power of graphs in speeding up online learning and decision making - Verimag, January 8, 2019, CNRS Grenoble, France (CNRS Jan8 2019)
  • A simple parameter-free and adaptive approach to optimization under a minimal local smoothness assumption - Verimag, January 7, 2019, CNRS Grenoble, France (CNRS Jan7 2019)

2018

  • The power of graphs in speeding up online learning and decision making - DeepMind, October 23, 2018, London, UK (DeepMind 2018)
  • Active block-matrix completion with adaptive confidence sets - International Workshop Optimization and Machine Learning, September 10-13, 2018, CIMI, Toulouse (CIMI 2018)
  • Online influence maximization - Workshop on Graph Learning, May 14, 2018, LINCS, Paris (LINCS 2018)
  • Recommender systems - Big Data Day, Polytech'Lille, March 22, 2018 (Polytech'Lille 2018)
  • Pliable rejection sampling - GDR Isis, Télécom ParisTech in Paris, February 8, 2018 (ISIS 2018)
  • Graph Bandits - MIST conference in Rajecká Lesná, January 7, 2018 (MIST 2018)

2017

  • SequeL, graphs in ML, and online recommender systems - R&DV du Plateau Inria 2017, November 9, 2017, Lille, France (Euratechnologies 2017)
  • Sequential sampling for kernel matrix approximation and online learning - DeepMind, September 19, 2017, London, UK (DeepMind 2017)
  • Active learning on networks and online influence maximization - Decision Theory and Network Science: Methods and Applications, September 18, 2017, Lancaster, UK (STOR-i 2017)
  • Side observation in graph bandits - ICML 2017 workshop on Picky Learners, August 11, 2017, Sydney, Australia (ICML 2017)
  • Efficient second-order online kernel learning with adaptive embedding (Impromptu talk) - Conference on Learning Theory, July 9, 2017, Amsterdam, Netherlands (COLT 2017)
  • Distributed sequential sampling for kernel matrix approximation - Toulouse Institute of Mathematics, France, June 29, 2017 (IMT 2017)
  • Where Is Justin Bieber? Or Online Influence Maximization - Inria Scientific Days 2017, June 14, 2017, Sophia-Antipolis, France (JS 2017)
  • Where Is Justin Bieber Hiding? Or How to Maximize Influencer Detection on Social Networks? (Popularization invited talk) - Inria Lille, France, May 30, 2017 (13:45 2017)
  • Dating day 2017, March 30, 2017, Lille, France (Dating 2017)
  • Distributed sequential sampling for kernel matrix approximation - Joint seminar of MuSyAD group of Universität Potsdam and Amazon at Amazon Berlin, Germany, March 22, 2017 (Berlin 2017)

2016

Demos and Presentations

  • Michal Valko, Miloš Hauskrecht, G. Cooper, S. Visweswaran, M. Saul, A. Seybert, J. Harrison, A. Post: Conditional Anomaly Detection - CS Day 2008 (CS Day 2008) [["#1st by people"], ["#2nd by faculty"]] also at (University of Pittsburgh, Arts & Sciences (Grad Expo 2008))
  • Michal Valko: Conditional anomaly detection with adaptive similarity metric - CS Department Research Competition (Research 2008) [#1st place]
  • Michal Valko, Branislav Kveton, Matthai Philiposse: Robust Face Recognition Using Online Learning - 9th University of Pittsburgh Science conference (SCIENCE 2009) also at (Live Demonstration (Grad Expo 2010) and (CS Day 2010))
  • Branislav Kveton, Michal Valko, Matthai Philiposse: Real-Time Adaptive Face Recognition - 23rd Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NeurIPS 2009)
  • Michal Valko: Graph-Based Anomaly Detection with Soft Harmonic Functions - CS Department Research Competition (Research 2011) [#1st place] also at (Grad Expo 2011 and CS Day 2011)

2015 and before

  • Online decision-making on graphs - DaSciM, LIX, École Polytechnique, France, April 14, 2015 (X 2015)
  • Bandits on Graphs: Exploiting Smoothness and Side Observations - CMLA at ENS Cachan, France, December 16, 2014 (ENS 2014)
  • Optimistic Optimization - MIST conference in Fačkovské sedlo, January 7, 2014 (MIST 2014)
  • Sequential Face Recognition with Minimal Feedback - 30 minutes of Science, Lille, May 2, 2013 (30MIN 2013)
  • Stochastic Simultaneous Optimistic Optimization - ComplACS Workshop, Leoben, Austria, November 2012 (ComplACS 2012)
  • One Class Learning From Streams of Unlabeled Data - Large-scale Online Learning and Decision Making, September 17, 2012 (LSOLDM 2012)
  • Scaling Graph-Based Algorithms - LAMPADA workshop, July 20, 2012 (LAMPADA 2012)
  • Large Scale Sequential Learning - Slovak Oxford Science, April 8, 2012 (Oxford UK 2012)
  • Adaptive Graph-Based Algorithms - Microsoft Research Redmond, July 6, 2011 (MSR 2011)
  • Online Semi-Supervised Learning - MPI Tuebingen, Germany, July 2011 (MPI 2011)
  • Semi-supervised Learning with Random Walks on Graphs - 6th Comenius University Alumni conference (TAM 2009)
  • Stochastic Simultaneous Optimistic Optimization - International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2013), June 2013, Atlanta, Georgia, USA (ICML StoSOO 2013)
  • Conditional Anomaly Detection Methods for Analysis of Clinical Alert Data - Machine Learning in Health Care Applications, ICML 2008, July 9, 2008, Helsinki, Finland (ICML Health 2008)
  • Distance Metric Learning for Conditional Anomaly Detection - FLAIRS, May 2008, Coconut Grove, Florida, USA (FLAIRS 2008)
  • Learning Predictive Models for Combinations of Heterogeneous Proteomic Data Sources - AMIA STB, March 2008, San Francisco, California, USA (AMIA STB 2008)
  • Dimensionality Reduction of High-throughput Proteomic Data using Partial Discriminative Projections - AI Seminar, FMFI, May 23, 2006 (FMFI AI Seminar 2006)