Tech giants gather in Chapel Hill for G20 AI summit

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Wednesday that artificial intelligence has become as essential to a country's economy as water, roads or electricity. His remarks came at the end of two days of the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which was also attended virtually by Elon Musk and in person by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The summit, co-hosted by the US Commerce Department and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, brought commerce and technology ministers from around 20 countries to the Carolina Inn, alongside a line-up of leading technology executives, according to CNBC's live coverage.

During his fireside chat with Lutnick, Huang reiterated his "five-layer cake" framework for AI development: energy at the base, followed by chips, data centres, AI models, and finally data and applications. He argued that every country now needs to build this stack in the same way it develops power grids or highways.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman held a separate fireside chat with Lutnick on the same day, outlining expected advances in AI and their economic implications, according to Axios. Altman also highlighted OpenAI's partnerships with North Carolina Governor Josh Stein on hurricane recovery and cyber defence.

Musk and Zuckerberg spoke a day earlier, on Tuesday. Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown joined Wednesday's sessions alongside Huang and Altman, while Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel said opposition to new data centre construction had been growing across the country as public unease over the expansion of AI increased.

Huang's assessment echoes what merchants are already reporting. A white paper published in June by Alibaba's Taotian Group and trade publication Tianxia Wangshang, based on nearly 900 merchant surveys, found that more than 95% of decision-makers had already incorporated AI tools into their daily operations, while 88% planned to continue increasing investment. The authors said AI had moved from an experiment for early adopters to standard infrastructure for running an online store.

The Chapel Hill gathering follows last weekend's G20 Finance Ministerial in Asheville. It was the second of three G20 events being hosted in North Carolina this year, ahead of a leaders' summit in Miami in December. Wednesday's programme will conclude with a ministerial family photograph and a press conference, where organisers are expected to provide details of any joint statement arising from the two days of talks.

Originally published on IBTimes Hong Kong