Rep. Ro Khanna: Jobs Will Be the Focus of White House A.I. Summit
*By Alisha Haridisani*
Dozens of Silicon Valley executives are scheduled to descend on the White House for a summit meeting Thursday to discuss how artificial intelligence can be used to strengthen the economy.
“I think the big question is ‘what are the new jobs going to look like?’” said Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California’s tech-heavy 17th district.
The summit, organized by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, will provide a forum for tech leaders and lawmakers to discuss how manufacturing, transportation, and healthcare can integrate A.I. without losing too many jobs and, hopefully, creating new ones.
A.I. is expected to automate at least 13 million jobs in the United States, according to a [paper](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/2e2f4eea-en.pdf?expires=1525898765&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=0EC91AF21400A0A43F18E3466CB1449A) published by the international Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) earlier this year. The paper also predicted that the effect on America's workforce may be greater than the disruption caused by automation of the auto industry in the 1950s, which resulted in large job losses in some local economies.
“You’re not just going to solve that issue by tax cuts or corporate giveaways,” said Khanna. “You really need to prepare a workforce for the jobs of the future."
Michael Kratsios, the White House's deputy chief technology officer, recently [told The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/08/white-house-will-host-amazon-facebook-ford-and-other-major-companies-for-summit-on-ai/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.610bec66f6d7) the potential applications for A.I., robots and machine learning touched nearly every industry.
“Whether you’re a farmer in Iowa, an energy producer in Texas, a drug manufacturer in Boston, you are going to be using these techniques to drive your business going forward,” Kratsios was quoted by The Post.
Khanna said the potential far-reaching impact of new technology required the administration to come up with a detailed plan for preparing American workers. "I thought the president, who made his reputation on ‘The Apprentice,’ would announce a lot of apprenticeship and tech programs," he said.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and IBM are reportedly among the companies that will attend the meeting at the White House with academics and lawmakers.
Snapchat has launched its first features to help users learn American Sign Language through its lenses and a game. The project was spearheaded by deaf and hard-of-hearing workers. Cheddar News was joined by Austin Vaday, software engineer at Snap, and his sign language interpreter, Jonathan Webb, to discuss the ASL Fingerspelling Lens and how the project came together. “We wanted to find a way to appropriately and properly educate the community so that folks can communicate with people like me using sign language," Vaday stated.
Brittan Heller, founder of the Center for Digital Civil Rights and a fellow at the Atlantic Council, joins Cheddar News to discuss the rise of sexual assault in the metaverse.
The second-largest stablecoin, USDC, backed by the company Circle recently received a $400 million funding infusion from traditional financial firms like BlackRock and Fidelity even as crypto reels from more high profile heists.
A group of Tesla shareholders suing CEO Elon Musk over some 2018 tweets about taking the company private is asking a federal judge to order Musk to stop commenting on the case.
The Week's Top Stories is a guided tour through the biggest market stories of the week, from winning stocks to brutal dips to the facts and forecasts generating buzz on Wall Street.
Between Bells executive producer Conor White recaps some of the biggest stories of the week, and teaches Azia Celestino and Hena Doba a thing or two at the same time. It's This Week In Trivia!
Josh Thorngren, vice president of growth at the cybersecurity company Torq, joined Cheddar News to talk about staffing shortages hitting his industry, and what he thinks is behind it. "Over 70 percent of cybersecurity professionals say they're unhealthily stressed, and it's stress because we only talk about them when they failed," he said. "That makes the job harder day in and day out, and so it's not just a how do we keep up with the rising challenge, it's how do we actually retain folks who are in these positions today." Thorngren also stated that cybersecurity needs to transform into a less technical field in order to appeal to a bigger group of potential workers.
Twitter said in a statement Friday that its board of directors has unanimously adopted a “poison pill” defense in response to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s proposal to buy the company and take it private.
