UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Responsible Machine Learning (CRML) will host the inaugural CRML Agentic AI Summit on Friday, January 23, 2026. The event will take place at Henley Hall 1010 from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with the option to attend in-person or virtually.
The summit will convene leading researchers, industry innovators, and students to examine the rapid emergence of agentic AI, a new generation of artificial intelligence systems capable of planning, reasoning, and acting autonomously toward complex goals.
“Agentic AI refers to systems that can autonomously plan, decide, and act with minimal human supervision,” said Murphy Niu, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department and co-organizer of the summit. She explained that this emerging field enables AI systems to tackle complex and multi-step sequences — from managing workflows to adapting in uncertain environments by planning and learning over time.
Xin (Eric) Wang, an assistant professor of computer science and co-organizer of the event, noted that agentic AI represents a fundamental shift beyond today’s generative large language models that can answer questions on demand.
“While generative AI excels at responding to prompts, agentic systems take a critical step forward — they proactively plan and execute tasks by interacting with the external environment,” he said, “Whether that’s operating software, booking flights, organizing files, or completing complex workflows, this shift from answering questions to taking action is what makes agentic AI fundamentally more powerful.”
The summit’s agenda will span technical foundations, human-centered design, economic implications, and frontier science. Speakers will explore how increasingly autonomous systems are reshaping research and industry, while also addressing the ethical, collaborative, and societal responsibilities that accompany these advances.
Highlighting the summit’s interdisciplinary scope, Nobel Laureate Michel Devoret, professor of physics at UCSB, will discuss the accelerating convergence of AI, optimization, and physics. Devoret, who shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics with fellow UCSB professor John Martinis, was recognized for foundational work demonstrating macroscopic quantum phenomena in superconducting electrical circuits, research that underpins today’s quantum technologies.
Additional speakers include Miguel Eckstein, distinguished professor in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department, who will address how AI is advancing neuroscience research.
“Using AI models to study covert attention has shown us that artificial systems can reveal neural patterns we might otherwise miss, helping bridge machine learning with real insights into the brain,” he said, referencing covert attention, which is the ability to shift focus within a visual scene without moving one’s eyes, such as scanning traffic or reading a crowd’s reaction.
Eckstein emphasized that the summit’s interdisciplinary scope is one of UCSB’s defining strengths, noting that AI’s impact across fields “enriches the campus and creates new opportunities for collaboration that wouldn’t exist within a single discipline.”
The event is also designed to connect students directly with emerging opportunities.
“The summit offers a great networking opportunity for students,” said Wang, “Between coffee breaks, lounge sessions, and informal conversations, students can connect with speakers and sponsors — many of whom are actively looking to hire.”
He also added that with the on-going effort at UCSB to launch a new bachelor’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, events like this summit will become an even more powerful bridge between classroom learning and career opportunities.
Participation in the summit is free, though in-person space is limited and advance RSVP is required. For those unable to attend on campus, the event will be live streamed and recorded. The full agenda and registration details are available here.
The CRML Agentic AI Summit is jointly sponsored by the UCSB Center for Responsible Machine Learning, UCSB Mind & Machine Intelligence, ScOp VC, Simular, Alpha Design AI, and Megagon Labs.
