With those key questions in mind, symposium speakers and panelists examined both the promise and the peril of AI: its capacity to expand human potential, improve global well-being, and drive scientific discovery, alongside the risks of displacement, inequity, misinformation, and geopolitical tension.
Topic areas ranged from AI in applied research and the hiring and managing of talent to the diplomatic, informational, militaristic, and economic dimensions of the AI world order.
In addition to Romer, participants included Hema Retty, managing director of AI at Blackrock; Mark Esposito, chief economist at micro1.ai and member of the Next Frontier of Operations initiative at the World Economic Forum; Igor Perisic, VP for engineering at LinkedIn, and contributor to the AI, privacy, and data working group at OECD.AI; Juliana Lisi, parter and associate director at Boston Consulting Group; Sheamus McGovern, founder and CEO of Open Data Science Conference; LTC Nathaniel D. Bastian, program manager at DARPA and deputy director of the Robotics Research Center at the U.S. Military Academy; Marc Chalé, research associate at the Army Cyber Institute and data science branch chief of the Department of the Air Force Studies and Analysis; Tucker Hamilton, national security expert, technology executive, and founder of the National Aerospace Robotics Competition; and Alvin Wang Graylin, author of Our Next Reality and digital fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI).