White House to hold artificial intelligence meeting with companies

By David Shepardson
The White House is seen with the Washington Monument (L) behind it and the Jefferson Memorial (R) in Washington, May 1, 2011. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn/Files

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House will convene a meeting on Thursday on the future of artificial intelligence in U.S. industry with major companies including Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Google parent Alphabet Inc and Oracle Corp as well as senior government officials.

Intel Corp CEO Brian Krzanich and the chief technical officers of Ford Motor Co and Boeing Co are due to take part, along with executives from Mastercard Inc, Microsoft Corp and Accenture, the White House said on Tuesday.

The Pentagon and the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor and Transportation are due to take part in the daylong event that will look at artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and research and development and removing barriers to its application.

"AI is quickly transforming every segment of American industry - from applications in precision agriculture and medical diagnostics to advanced manufacturing and autonomous transportation," the White House said.

Other companies taking part include IBM Corp, Bank of America Corp, General Electric Co, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Monsanto Co, Pfizer Inc, Walmart Inc, Whirlpool Corp, CVS Health Corp and United Airlines.

Facebook Vice President of AI Jerome Pesenti, Google senior research scientist Greg Corrado and the presidents of California Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University also are set to participate.

Dean Garfield, president and chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Council, called the event "an important step to building collaboration between government and industry."

"The tech sector is committed to ensuring that all Americans reap the benefits of this transformative technology, which has the potential to save lives, improve how we harvest food, transform education and more," Garfield said.

Britain last month announced a 1 billion pound ($1.4 billion) joint investment in the AI industry, while the European Union announced it would boost AI investment by about 70 percent to 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) by 2020.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Will Dunham)