The Post-Transformer Era: AI's Next Frontier
Organized by NYU Tandon and Pathway, in partnership with select IIT Technical Councils.
What comes after Transformers?
The Transformer architecture behind GPT has dominated AI for nearly a decade. But cracks are showing. Transformer-based models have no continuous learning (frozen in time, like Groundhog Day), limited context windows, and compute costs that spiral as reasoning gets longer.
What would it take for the next generation of frontier models to do long-horizon reasoning? To learn continuously? Generalize from experience? Join leading researchers from NYU Tandon and Pathway as they explore where AI is headed, from the algorithmic foundations to emerging architectures challenging the Transformer's dominance.
Speakers
🎤 Martín Farach-Colton, Chair, Computer Science & Engineering, NYU Tandon | ACM Fellow. IEEE Fellow. SIAM Fellow. One of the most notable voices in algorithms. Founded TokuTek (acquired).
🎤 Julian Togelius, Professor, NYU Tandon | IEEE Fellow. Head of AI at Nof1. Author of "Artificial General Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2024). h-index 84. AI for Games and Finance
🎤 Adrian Kosowski, Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Founder, Pathway | PhD at 20. Tenured at Inria at 23. 100+ papers, h-index 29. Co-founded SPOJ, the world's first online competitive programming community. Previously Professor at École Polytechnique.
🎙️ Moderated by Zuzanna Stamirowska, CEO & Co-Founder, Pathway | PhD in Complexity Science. Featured in Le Point's "100 geniuses whose innovation will change the world."
What to expect
- Why Transformer-based models hit a wall: memory limitations preventing long-context reasoning, losing coherence rapidly, and a fundamental scaling wall despite massive investment
- Emerging paradigms: sparse memory, short-horizon and long-horizon reasoning, local beliefs, Hebbian plasticity, and brain-inspired architectures.
- The path to continual learning and interpretable AI
- Live Q&A with frontier researchers
- Exclusive Pathway merchandise for select participants
Who should attend
Open to all. Ideal for pre-final and final year students in bachelor's/master's programs, as well as researchers and faculty interested in post-transformer AI.
Join us
- When: February 6, 2026 🕚 11:00 AM ET / 9:30 PM IST (after class hours)
- Where: Virtual (link shared closer to the event)
Organized by NYU Tandon and Pathway, in partnership with select IIT Technical Councils.