It’s mind-blowing how much world-shaping work that gets done in hotel ballrooms. Machine learning experts regularly gather at conferences around the world to discuss noteworthy work and how to move the industry forward. Few are fortunate enough to attend in person, but you can sometimes find video online.

The most recent example: The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) met in Hawaii last week, and among topics discussed was the roadmap for AI research in the United States for the next 20 years.

The process to create a plan for the next two decades started in November with private workshops attended by academics and people from industry. A draft of the report is due out later this month, and the final will come in April following a period of public comment.

A town hall gathering at AAAI gave the world its first glimpse of what the report will include. VentureBeat doesn’t typically write stories about a report whose draft hasn’t even been released yet, but we made an exception here because of the major implications it could have for the future.

The priorities set in the report could shape government policy and funding, national security, and people’s personal lives through health care, personalized education, and evidence-based social policy.

It could even be a step toward the kind of national AI strategy former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis reportedly urged President Trump to create.

Commissioned by the Computing Community Consortium and working with the National Science Foundation, organizers of the effort include Cornell University professor Bart Selman and Stanford University professor and former Google Cloud chief scientist Fei-Fei Li.

Major themes discussed in the town hall that may be part of the final report include:

Integration of key AI systems

Better understanding of human intelligence and emotion

Training robots to learn by example

How people interact with AI systems

Recommendations are still being gathered and refined but include:

An open national AI platform

Broaden AI education in high schools and colleges

Create contextually intelligent AI that act as a lifelong assistant

“If you want to do common sense knowledge, if you want to do true natural language semantics, you need a good knowledge base; a good, large knowledge graph in a sense, but the knowledge graph, for example, that Google is developing is in house and not accessible to academic research. So we need a very large, shared resource that will be developed across the country, then shared via some institute or center that would manage that,” Selman said about the idea of a national AI platform.

What surprised me watching the town hall was the number of times fundamental knowledge about people came up, things like understanding human intelligence. Also surprising was the number of times words like “trust” was used.

If you’re interested in taking a closer look at initial findings and workshop results, you can watch the town hall video or read through this CCC blog.

Stick with VentureBeat to hear the final recommendations and the challenges and opportunities researchers see for AI in the years ahead.

For AI coverage, send news tips to Khari Johnson and Kyle Wiggers — and be sure to bookmark our AI Channel.

Thanks for reading,

Khari Johnson

AI Staff Writer

P.S. Please enjoy this video exploring the history of artificial intelligence.

From VB

Facebook’s ‘polyglot’ AI speaks English, German, and Spanish

Researchers at Facebook have created a “polyglot” AI system that can perform language conversion between English, German, and Spanish.

Amazon weighs in on potential ‘legislative framework’ for facial recognition

In a blog post, Amazon said it would support the creation of a legislative framework guiding the use of facial recognition technologies.

Microsoft really doesn’t want you to buy Office 2019

Microsoft has launched a marketing campaign featuring twins using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The message is simple: Buy Office 365, not Office 2019.

CB Insights: Here are the top 100 AI companies in the world

CB Insights lays out the top 100 AI companies in its third cohort. They’ve collectively attracted over $6 billion in investments.

Landing.ai hires Amazon director of computer vision Gopi Prashanth

Amazon director of AI and computer vision Gopi Prashanth will become VP of Engineering at Landing.ai, a company created by Google Brain cofounder Andrew Ng.

Allen Institute debuts AI that plays Pictionary-style games to learn ‘common sense’

AllenAI plays a Pictionary-style game with people in order to gain a basic understanding of the world, often referred to as ‘common sense’.

Beyond VB

Researchers create hotel-recognition system to aid human trafficking investigations

Researchers have built a massive dataset of hotel images with the intention of helping law enforcement in human trafficking investigations. The dataset, called Hotels-50k, consists over more than 1 million images from 50,000 hotels globally. (via Gizmodo)

Is China’s corruption-busting AI system ‘Zero Trust’ being turned off for being too efficient?

Despite being restricted to just 30 counties and cities, artificial intelligence system has already helped snare 8,721 officials. System cross-references big data to evaluate work and personal lives of millions of government workers (via South China Morning Post)

The rise of the robot reporter

As reporters and editors find themselves the victims of layoffs at digital publishers and traditional newspaper chains alike, journalism generated by machine is on the rise. (via New York Times)

Calif. professor: Self-driving cars could more than double traffic in San Francisco

It’s the not-so-far-away future in San Francisco. One-Wheels and e-scooters litter the road. Your self-driving car has just deposited you at Union Square, and you’ve instructed it to return in an hour, after you’ve purchased the latest it-smartphone, the iPhone Z. (via SF Chronicle)