Artificial intelligence could beckon new innovation wave: MasterCard exec

Artificial intelligence is an emerging field that provides new benefits and capabilities, according to Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard president of operations and technology,

“I don’t think there’s a company, an industry, a country which isn’t interested in advancing artificial intelligence right now,” he told Liz Claman during a FOX Business interview on Wednesday.

MasterCard as well as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Intel are among the close to 40 companies expected to attend a White House meeting Thursday on artificial intelligence. Topics will include the impact of artificial intelligence on the job market.

AI is set to have an impact on a variety of industries that include agriculture, automotive, healthcare and manufacturing.

“This can be a true foundation for a whole new wave of innovation, a whole new wave of economic growth and development,” McLaughlin said. “So we really want to make sure it’s understood.”

The AI summit will also discuss how to adapt regulations to monitor the advances in technology.

“You have to look at the implications of what the technology can do,” McLaughlin said. “But what we shouldn’t allow it to do is prevent us from taking advantage of the real benefits it can bring today.”

The White House Office of Science and Technology spent an estimated $2 billion last year on AI development on unclassified programs as China moved ahead of the U.S. in filing for AI patents.

McLaughlin is leery of only looking at the raw count of patent numbers.

“The number of patents doesn’t correlate to the value of what’s being patented,” he said.

Artificial intelligence is generating research that is becoming part of our everyday lives such as in MasterCard’s detection of fraudulent patterns in real time.

“We have been able to prevent billions of dollars of fraud helping all the citizens that are using it, all the merchants that are on it,” he said.