AI Horizons Summit brings tech leaders, 'legacy industrial titans' together

For the second time in just three months the city of Pittsburgh is acting as a home base for the conversation on artificial intelligence.

Back in July, U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick hosted the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University.

Now, the AI spotlight returns as Pittsburgh’s AI Horizons Summit kicks off in Bakery Square today — focused on physical AI intelligent systems that interact with the real world through robotics, autonomy and simulation.

Joanna Doven, executive director of Pittsburgh’s AI Strike Team, told TribLive that the event is designed to combine “legacy industrial titans” such as Westinghouse Electric, Bank of New York Mellon and Alcoa, with AI companies such as Gecko Robotics.

“It’s a whole team together,” Doven said. “The old and the new need each other.”

Lasting two days, the summit features speakers from a variety of industries including tech, business, government and higher education.

Executives from companies including Gecko Robotics, Skild AI, Google, Ansys, Abridge, EOS, EQT and Bank of America, will be present.

In total, 17 states are expected to be represented and people from 10 countries have signed up to watch the livestream, Doven said.

Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat from Montgomery County, and McCormick, a Republican from Pittsburgh, will speak at the summit.

Today, Shapiro will speak with Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian, BNY CEO Robin Vince and Westinghouse Interim CEO Dan Summer about how AI will impact the future of industry giants.

At the end summit on Friday, McCormick is scheduled to talk about AI, energy and “America’s competitive edge,” according to the summit agenda.

Jake Loosararian, co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics, which uses fixed sensors and robots that climb, crawl, swim and fly in the physical world, is just one of three tech higher-ups who will be speaking about AI’s impact on across industries.

Loosararian said he plans to talk about the limited value of some AI and about the principles that make it useful.

He explained that AI’s capabilities have been overpromised. Gecko Robotics tries to be pragmatic with AI implementation.

“If it does show value then fantastic, I will build it,” he said. “(But) you want to avoid overeagerness.”

Loosararian said he does not expect his approach to be popular among the other summitgoers.

“If I have anything popular to say, then I’m probably not worth listening to,” he said.