MIT President L. Rafael Reif today attended a technology conference convened by the White House Office of American Innovation. The meeting included leading corporate CEOs and other technology leaders, brought together to advise the White House on how technology and data can be used to improve government operations and on how best to anticipate future technologies and their implications for the government and society.
The participants broke into small groups to discuss issues and then met with U.S. President Trump at the end of the day.
Reif attended two of the small group discussions — one titled “Analytics/Dashboard,” focused on how to use data and metrics to improve government services, personnel and technology; and one titled “Future Trends,” on how government can anticipate, integrate, and facilitate the development of emerging technologies, especially in fields such as machine learning and the internet of things (IoT).
“As U.S. government leaders seek to use innovative technology to better serve the American people, it’s vital to make sure that they receive expert advice, both about the best ways to use these technologies to serve the public, and about how to anticipate and address the complex implications of their use,” Reif says. “As an institution with a mission of national service, and as a pioneer in many of the technologies under discussion at the White House — from machine learning and AI to robotics and IoT — MIT has an important role to play at the center of this conversation.”
In support of MIT's mission, President Reif has spoken in recent months, through letters to the MIT community and published opinion pieces, on the importance of continuing to attract global talent to the United States, sustaining federal financial support for advanced scientific research, and continuing global cooperation on climate change.
