AI’s transformative impact is already here — and other takeaways from this week’s ‘Forging the Future’ summit

Innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders from around the world convened on the University's Pittsburgh campus this week to explore how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and advanced computing are reshaping health care, economic competitiveness and the global innovation economy.

Pitt, in partnership with the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC) and the Council on Competitiveness (COC), hosted experts for three days of conversation and collaboration during "Forging the Future: The Intersection of Health, AI and Tech." Along with being the first time the annual GFCC Global Innovation Summit was held in the U.S., this year's summit was also paired for the first time with the COC's Competitiveness Conversations Across America series.

At the summit - which saw attendance from regional, national and global leaders across industry, academia, the public sector and venture capital - the University showcased how it is partnering to advance an intentional, place-making strategy that drives innovation, growth and long-term prosperity.

"We want to explore the intersectionality of health, AI and technology with an eye towards the kind of collaboration that this region is known for," Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel said in her welcome remarks. "That creates friendly collisions that can catalyze entire ecosystems simply by having the right people in the right place, together at the same time."

Participants discussed the unique strengths of Pittsburgh, which is known around the world as a hub of AI and health innovation, in large part because of the synergistic research, education and clinical activity of its two biggest universities.

"We're a city of eds, meds and emerging tech whose impact is amplified by the research and talent of our academic institutions," said Farnam Jahanian, president of Carnegie Mellon University, also an event partner. Jahanian also noted that the universities "play a pivotal role in catalyzing and supporting our innovation economy."

Here are the top three topics and takeaways from the conference:

Many participants expect the future of education to feature deep integration of artificial intelligence into the curriculum across all disciplines, including the social sciences, humanities and life sciences.

"We have to integrate AI into the educational framework," said Hooman Rashidi, associate dean of AI in medicine at Pitt. "I don't mean for folks like us in computer science, who are coders. I'm talking about the masses."

Multiple panelists also explored how the technology might transform the scientific discovery process itself. In these conversations, AI was described as a "copilot" rather than a substitute for the human intellect. Some experts said they see the present moment as a transition to the "AI-enabled era" of research and discovery, in which researchers are able to leverage large data sets and machine learning in ways that would have otherwise required thousands of scientists and countless hours of work.

It's a shift that necessitates institutions commit to promoting AI fluency for all students, staff and faculty. But it doesn't need to be an alarming change, many summit participants said.

"I think 'artificial' frightens people," said Harris Pastides, president emeritus of the University of South Carolina. "There's not one thing that's artificial about AI. We invented it."

[Read more: This partnership with Anthropic and AWS is positioning Pitt as an AI-enabled Campus of the Future.]