White House plans artificial intelligence summit with major firms, academics

WASHINGTON — The White House on Thursday plans to convene executives from Amazon, Facebook, Google, Intel and 34 other major U.S. companies as it seeks to supercharge the deployment of powerful robots, algorithms and the broader field of artificial intelligence.

The Trump administration intends to ask academics, government officials and AI developers about ways to adapt regulations to advance AI in such fields as agriculture, health care and transportation, according to a draft schedule of the event. And they’re set to discuss the U.S. government’s power to fund cutting-edge research into such technologies as machine learning.

For the White House, the challenge is to strike a balance between the benefits of computers that can spot disease or drive cars and the reality that jobs, or lives, are at stake.

“Whether you’re a farmer in Iowa, an energy producer in Texas (or) a drug manufacturer in Boston, you are going to be using these techniques to drive your business going forward,” Michael Kratsios, deputy chief technology officer at the White House, said in a recent interview.

Among those expected to be in the room for that private gathering Thursday will be representatives from tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia and Oracle, as well as other businesses such as Ford, Land O’Lakes, Mastercard, Pfizer and United Airlines, according to the White House. Expected to represent Facebook is Jerome Pesenti, its vice president of AI, the company confirmed. Amazon plans to send Rohit Prasad,