Amazon, Facebook execs attending White House artificial intelligence summit

The White House is hosting an artificial intelligence summit on Thursday with business leaders from major U.S. companies as it seeks to promote a greater integration of the emerging technology into the workforce.

The summit, called “Artificial Intelligence for American Industry,” will include 100 participants across industries including food and agriculture, energy, manufacturing and health care, according to a draft of Thursday’s schedule.

Among the major U.S. corporations that will be represented are Accenture, Amazon, Boeing, Citigroup, Facebook, United Airlines and Walmart.

Discussion topics are expected to include supporting AI research and development, removing barriers and regulation to AI innovation, adapting applications of AI to fit new sectors and helping the American workforce take advantage of the technology.

While the Trump administration promotes the role of AI, there is  uncertainty among workers regarding job security. Experts surveyed by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute anticipate a 50% probability that all jobs will be able to be completed by robots in just over 120 years. In the near term, the accounting firm PwC predicted that as many as 38% of U.S. jobs could be assumed by robots by 2030.

PwC’s study indicated that the adoption or robotics may not be a net negative for human laborers over the long term as new forms of work would likely arise.

China’s government has already made AI a priority as trade tensions, revolving partly around technological patents, trigger conflict between the world’s two largest economies. Last summer, China laid out a plan to become the world leader in artificial intelligence and increase the value of that sector to $150 billion by 2030.

A draft schedule for the summit obtained by FOX Business reiterated that the U.S. is “the world leader in the development of AI.”