The White House’s AI Committee's First Meeting
The White House’s hand-picked group of federal leaders in artificial intelligence held their first meeting, getting a lay of the land and picking their own set of leaders to help form the path forward.
The select committee was created on May 10 as a subset of the National Science and Technology Council, with a mandate to advise the White House on government wide AI research and development priorities. The group is also charged with establishing partnerships between government, the private sector and independent researchers.
The team is led by Michael Kratsios, deputy assistant to the president for technology policy, NSF Director France Cordova and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Director Steven Walker.
“Earlier this year when my office proposed a Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, made up of the senior-most leaders from our nation’s most important science agencies, the response I heard was one united in support of the idea,” Kratsios said in his opening remarks
“There’s tremendous energy within our agencies and across the highest levels of the White House to further our support for AI research and development to improve the lives of the American people.”
At the kickoff meeting, committee members discussed the current state of AI research in government, including Energy’s new Summit supercomputer, the Defense Department’s new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and a new research partnership between DARPA and NSF.
The members also worked on “policies to prioritise AI research, better leverage federal data and computing resources for the AI research community, and train the next generation of American AI researchers,” according to a readout from the meeting.
“Artificial intelligence has tremendous potential to benefit the American people, and continued US leadership in AI is critical to our national security and economic competitiveness,” the co-chairs said in a statement after the meeting.
“Advances in AI are rapidly transforming nearly all aspects of our economic and occupational landscape, including how we navigate around our cities, manufacture goods and services, grow and distribute our food, respond to disasters and emergencies, conduct financial transactions, treat and prevent disease and keep our nation safe.
Delivering these benefits will require sustained federal investment in AI research and a continued pipeline of technical talent.
“Over the coming months, our select committee looks forward to working with the broader AI research community to ensure that the United States remains the global leader in artificial intelligence.”
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