The U.S. government spends about $4 trillion a year, and the question every taxpayer seems to ask is: How can we get more, while paying less?
The answer more and more leaders are turning to: AI.
That’s why thousands of agency leaders, congressional staff, entrepreneurs, developers and media will attend our third annual GTC DC event Oct. 22-24 at the Reagan Center in Washington. GTC DC has quickly become the largest AI event in Washington.
It’s research, not rhetoric, attendees will tell you, that makes D.C. an AI accelerator like no other. The conference is packed with representatives from federal agencies — among them, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and DARPA — that routinely marshal scientific efforts on a scale far beyond that of anywhere else in the world.
Unmatched Research Leadership
These efforts extend deep into the computing industry, with the federal government commissioning the construction of supercomputers with ever more stupendous capabilities. Summit and Sierra, a pair of GPU-powered machines completed this year, represent an investment of $325 million. Summit is easily the world’s fastest.
And while Washington’s leaders are transforming AI, AI is transforming the region’s economy into one of the nation’s most vibrant startup hubs, with 54 deals worth $544 million in the second quarter of 2018 — up 29 percent from the year-ago period, according to the latest PwC MoneyTree report.
Bringing Public, Private Sector Leaders Together
All of this makes GTC DC a one-of-a-kind gathering, bringing together leaders from the public and private sectors for panel discussions about AI policy, and 150 talks about applying AI to a wide range of applications, from healthcare and cybersecurity to self-driving cars and autonomous machines.
The event features two keynote talks, from U.S. Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent and NVIDIA Vice President of Accelerated Computing Ian Buck.
Other notable speakers include:
- Heidi King, acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
- James Kurose, assistant director for computer and information science and engineering at the National Science Foundation
- Derek Kan, undersecretary of transportation for policy at the Department of Transportation
- Elizabeth Jones, acting director for radiology and imaging sciences for the National Institutes of Health
- Missye Brickell from the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
- Bakul Patel, associate center director for digital health at the Food and Drug Administration
- Melissa Froelich, chief counsel of at the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Leaders from the public and private sector will participate in panel discussions to discuss policy issues for:
- Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief
- American Leadership in AI Research
- The Keys to Deploying Self-Driving Cars
- How AI Can Improve Citizen Services
- AI for Healthcare
- Transforming Agriculture with AI
This is your opportunity to join in the discussions around these — and other efforts — that the rest of the nation, and the world, will be seeing in the news months from now.
AI in Healthcare
Anchored by the National Institutes of Health, which spends more than $37 billion on research annually — making it the world’s largest funder of biomedical research — the D.C. area is home to a constellation of healthcare innovators, many of whom are flocking to GTC.
Luminaries such as Elizabeth Jones, acting director of radiology and imaging sciences at the National Institutes for Health; Baku Patel, associate director at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; and Agata Anthony, regulatory affairs executive at General Electric, will discuss how to bring AI out of labs and into clinics.
Other healthcare speakers include:
- Daniel Jacobson, chief scientist for systems biology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who will talk about how Summit, the world’s fastest supercomputer, is being used to attack the opioid epidemic.
- Faisal Mahmood, a postdoctoral fellow from Johns Hopkins University, who will talk about how a new generation of AI-generated images can be used to accelerate efforts to train up sophisticated new medical imaging systems.
- Avantika Lal, a research scientist from NVIDIA’s deep learning genomics group, who will explain how deep learning can transform noisy, low-quality DNA sequencing data into clean, high-quality data.
AI in Cybersecurity and Law Enforcement
Cybersecurity’s another industry where the D.C. area leads the way — with the region employing more than 77,500 cybersecurity professionals. It’s an industry that’s one of the leaders in AI adoption. Among featured speakers covering the topic:
- Booz Allen Hamilton Lead Data Scientist Rachel Allen will talk about how to secure sprawling commercial and government networks.
- NVIDIA’s Bartley Richardson, senior data scientist for AI infrastructure, will talk about how new machine learning approaches to cybersecurity threats.
- And, if you’re a fan of CSI, Graphistry CEO Leo Meyerovich will talk about bringing the latest graphics technology to crime scene analytics.
AI for Safer Driving
The big-picture thinking at GTC DC extends to self-driving cars, too.
While carmakers continue to add more and more autonomy to their vehicles, policymakers are working on the infrastructure and regulatory changes that will make mass adoption of fully autonomous vehicles possible.
The highlight: a discussion at GTC DC will be a panel on deploying self-driving cars. Among the speakers:
- Melissa Froelich, a staffer from the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce
- Audi Director of Government Affairs Brad Stertz
- Bert Kaufman, head of corporate and regulatory affairs at Zoox
- Finch Fulton, deputy assistant secretary for Transportation Policy at the U.S. Transportation Department
Get ahead of the game – come to GTC DC to learn what the rest of the nation, and the world, will be seeing in the news months from now.