Watch: A conversation on how AI is revolutionizing across industries

On Wednesday, September 29, Axios future correspondent Bryan Walsh discussed how companies and governments are integrating AI to modernize efficient systems in society, featuring Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto and Global GM (Smart Cities & Transportation) for IOT Solutions at Intel Sameer Sharma.

Mayor William Peduto spoke about how Pittsburgh’s universities have aided in the city’s R&D for AI, the importance of standards creation for algorithms, and how Pittsburgh has adopted AI technology into some of the city’s management systems.

• On crafting standards for regulating AI security: “One of the industries that I think that really needs to be looked at and needs to start at a local level is how we can incorporate AI for good, in order to be able to understand what the rules and regulations should be for artificial intelligence as we consume it on a daily basis through social media and other means.”
• On successful AI integration in Pittsburgh’s transportation system: “We began creating traffic signals that actually could learn, traffic signals that were created with algorithms and sensors that could make our streets safer, that could reduce idling time by 34%.”

Sameer Sharma explained how cities can harness AI to enhance public safety, the future of smart city initiatives, and how the pandemic shifted many cities’ public services to digital platforms.

• On using AI to analyze vast amounts of data: “When you have this data tsunami and we are already in the middle of it, how do you make sense of it? That’s where the power of AI at the edge and in the cloud comes in, and it needs to be connected to an intelligent network.”
• On how COVID-era digitization could boost smart city initiatives: “COVID was a very tough experience for us as a global community, but if there is one silver lining, it is that years of debate and discussion about digitization, digital transformation, has converted into months of action. And you clearly saw cities that were thinking ahead and had built some resilience and flexibility into their infrastructure were able to pivot quickly and provide these new services.”

Axios SVP of Product and Technology Melanie Colton hosted a View from the Top segment with Beyond Limits CEO and Founder AJ Abdallat, who discussed how AI is being applied to existing knowledge to solve complex problems.

• “What we’re seeing and what we’re doing here at Beyond Limits is we see the evolution as AI will center around cognitive reasoning. This will enhance the numeric AI applications. This hybrid approach to AI allows us to really solve more complex problems, more challenging problems, by combining the data-driven approach with embedded human knowledge.”

Thank you Beyond Limits for sponsoring this event.