Carnegie Mellon University is perfect venue for energy and AI summit, leaders say

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President Trump, several cabinet members, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the world's top leaders in energy and artificial intelligence will attend the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on Tuesday at Carnegie Mellon University, the perfect venue for these topics.

"CMU has always been the place for machine learning and AI, and really this is a recognition of all the value CMU has brought to AI," said Zico Kolter, director of CMU's Machine Learning Department.

Kolter, who oversees AI efforts at Carnegie Mellon, said this summit also highlights the influence western Pennsylvania has in this space.

"We are going to see a lot of growth in these new sectors of the economy. We're going to see a lot of growth when it comes to energy, when it comes to things like data centers to power those new AI models that are being developed these days. Western Pennsylvania is a hub for this kind of work," Kolter said.

Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Dave McCormick organized the summit and is set to unveil $70 billion for artificial intelligence and energy development across the state. It'll include building data centers, which require lots of energy to power AI.

Don Smith, the president of RIDC, whose mission is to drive economic development, says the investment will bring jobs, boost the economy, and much more.

"Those buildings and jobs will create taxes. So, it'll help the fiscal health of our municipalities. And really, we're talking about getting in the early stages of the biggest wave of new industrial development in a very long time. And so I think this bodes well for our ability to compete successfully in the AI economy," Smith said.

Smith says western Pennsylvania is perfectly poised to lead the future of AI.

"It's the combination of energy. The whole AI revolution is driven by computational power capacity, and then the talent. And we have those three things in abundance here," Smith said.

Kolter said that as more companies develop in the region, it's going to encourage more investment.

"It's going to just make it easier and easier for future innovators or future entrepreneurs to stay in the area to build up companies and AI and other tech areas in the region because the talent, the rest of the ecosystem needed to support the companies, is already going to be here," Kolter said.

"Investments like this one, and one being discussed at the summit, and events like the summit, hopefully, can drive that further and can drive innovations in the space," he added.

Jessica Guay

Jessica Guay joined KDKA as a reporter in February 2021. Before joining KDKA, Jessica was a morning anchor and reporter at WJAC in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. She was also an anchor and reporter at WCHS in Charleston, West Virginia, and at WTOV in Steubenville, Ohio.

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