White House to hold AI meeting with Amazon, Facebook, Google, others

The White House on Thursday will host a summit with major technology companies to discuss the development of artificial intelligence (AI).

Intel, Oracle, IBM, NVIDIA, Mastercard, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Accenture and Amazon plan to send executives to the meeting. They will join representatives from 25 other companies, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the meeting Tuesday.

In total, over 100 senior government officials, academics, research and business leaders will participate, according to the White House. Their talks will focus on AI research and development and regulations.

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It is being organized by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and will be hosted by its chief, Trump tech advisor Michael Kratsios.

Dean Garfield, the president of the Information Technology Industry Council, called the meeting “an important step to building collaboration between government and industry.”

“In order to maintain America’s leadership on A.I., the administration should continue to invest in research and development, and advance programs that equip the workforce with skills of the future. We look forward to sharing how we can help advance these priorities and others at the event,” he said in a statement.

IBM said it welcomes the opportunity to share its vision on AI with the White House in a statement to The Hill.

The meeting follows a push from the technology industry for the White House to engage more with AI.

Garfield and top tech executives like Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt have said that the White House needs to do more in advancing AI development.

Kratsios hinted in February that the White House was looking to expand its involvement in AI, telling The Hill that it planned to prioritize research funding in academia “and work in partnership with the private sector.” He did not provide specifics.

U.S. tech firms are concerned about China’s rapid advancement in AI technology, which they see as a threat to their dominant position.

Silicon Valley is becoming increasingly reliant on AI in emerging technologies such as
self-driving cars, as well as machine-learning algorithms that are used to catch abusive content on social media.

This story was updated at 1:09 p.m.