Microsoft to Meet With White House on AI-Powered Storm Forecasts

The Biden administration will call on the tech industry on Thursday to design artificial intelligence models to improve public welfare in the coming decades, including by reducing car crashes and accelerating medical research.

Cabinet officials, led by White House science adviser Arati Prabhakar, will meet with leaders in Washington from companies such as Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.‘s Google, and General Electric Co. They’ll discuss working together to train AI models to forecast dangerous weather and manage demand for electricity, among other topics, Prabhakar said.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf, and budget director Shalanda Young are scheduled to attend on behalf of the Biden administration.

“None of these aspirations can be accomplished by industry alone,” Prabhakar told reporters ahead of the meeting. “Many of them require deep research that’s well beyond the reach of corporate product development.”

Thursday’s meeting builds on voluntary commitments adopted by more than a dozen technology companies last summer, including Microsoft and Google, to responsibly develop and deploy AI. A bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled a blueprint for laws on AI in May, which would be more enforceable than the White House effort, but the proposals will be a heavy lift to get through a bitterly divided Congress.

The administration on Thursday will also showcase how federal agencies are using AI to deliver government services. They’ll discuss how to use AI to design new semiconductors, an essential component of electronic devices. The administration expects the projects outlined at Thursday’s meetings to take years, if not decades, Prabhakar said.

“We’re trying to project the big vision so people know that while we’re in the trenches day to day, it’s going to take a series of R&D efforts over a period of time to fully achieve these” goals, she said.