Plenary Session #3: The AI Landscape: Threats, Challenges, and Opportunities

The Commissioners met for the third plenary session on July 11, 2019, in Cupertino, California.

During their day-long meeting, they received presentations from the Intelligence Community, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense on threats to AI research and development in the United States, and the White House’s progress in developing an action plan to implement the National Security Presidential Memorandum on AI.

The working group chairs provided readouts from their working group meetings. Commissioners reviewed, discussed, and approved the draft Initial Report to Congress due at the end of July, and then discussed the path forward for submitting the Interim Report to Congress in November. They concurred and approved the Commission staff’s recommendation to organize a public conference that mirrored the Commission’s working group structure, making it a total of four panels with opening, lunch, and closing speakers. Each panel will include leaders from academia, industry, and government. The Commissioners agreed that the public conference is a great way to engage a wider audience and solicit feedback on the Commission’s initial assessments. The purpose of the conference is to build upon the ongoing public discourse around AI and focus on the AI-related national security issues as detailed by Congress in the legislation that created the Commission. The Commissioners selected November 5, 2019 for the date to hold the conference. At the end of the day, the Commissioners received a briefing from a subject matter expert on international workforce and talent trends.

As the next couple months would be focused on the Interim Report, the Commissioners agreed to hold their fourth plenary session in Washington, DC in October.