Meta Platforms Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg and Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook joined tech industry leaders in touting their pledges to boost spending in the US on artificial intelligence during a dinner hosted by President Donald Trump that highlighted his deepening relationship with Silicon Valley.

In his opening remarks, Trump addressed a key concern of tech companies: ensuring there’s enough energy to meet surging power demands from the data centers behind the AI boom.

“We’re making it very easy for you in terms of electric capacity and getting it for you, getting your permits,” Trump said in the White House State Dining Room. “We’re leading China by a lot, by a really, by a great amount.”

Thursday’s dinner marked a rare gathering in Washington of top executives and founders from some of the world’s most valuable tech companies — all vying for an edge in the emerging field of AI. Attendees also included OpenAI Inc.’s Sam Altman, Alphabet Inc.’s Sundar Pichai and co-founder Sergey Brin, and Microsoft Corp.’s Satya Nadella and Bill Gates.

The president went around the table asking executives to talk about their plans. Corporate leaders took turns highlighting their efforts to expand in the US, with each expressing gratitude for administration policies they see as bolstering efforts to advance AI. Trump asked Zuckerberg to speak first.

“All of the companies here are building, just making huge investments in the country in order to build out data centers and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation,” the Meta CEO told Trump. Pressed by the president on how much his company was investing, Zuckerberg said “at least $600 billion” through 2028.

“That’s a lot,” Trump said. In recent days, the president has touted a massive data center Meta is building in Louisiana that will cost $50 billion.

Trump has drawn tech executives into his orbit with an agenda aimed at lowering tax and regulatory burdens for business in a bid to ramp up investments in the US and secure the country’s dominance in cutting-edge tech sectors. The burgeoning artificial intelligence field has been a centerpiece of that focus.

Trump’s White House AI czar, Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Sacks, in July helped unveil a sweeping action plan calling for easing regulation of artificial intelligence, stepping up research and development, and boosting domestic energy production to fuel energy-hungry data centers — all to ensure the US keeps an edge over rivals such as China.

The president has secured billions in corporate commitments to drive construction of AI infrastructure. On Thursday, the White House hailed Hitachi Energy’s announcement that it planned to invest more than $1 billion in electric grid infrastructure that could support AI’s growing power demands.

More broadly, companies have announced plans to bolster US investment as they look to avoid tariffs Trump is placing on imports to spur a shift toward domestic manufacturing of critical goods. Trump has indicated that some companies that commit to building in the US could get a break from some tariffs.

Cook, whose company last month committed to spending an additional $100 billion on domestic manufacturing for a total pledge of $600 billion, thanked Trump for “setting the tone such that we could make a major investment.”

The president indicated that Cook’s investment promise would help spare Apple from tariffs on semiconductor imports that the administration has plans to impose. “Tim Cook would be in pretty good shape,” Trump said.

Trump’s relationship with Silicon Valley took wing at his swearing-in ceremony in January, when Zuckerberg, Cook and Pichai each had prominent seats after having donated millions toward the inauguration. Trump and his allies will be eager to tap those pockets again ahead of next year’s midterm elections to determine control of Congress.

Earlier Thursday, many of the same executives joined first lady Melania Trump for a discussion on AI, where she hailed the business leaders as visionaries and urged their cooperation in helping responsibly guide the broader adoption of AI technology.

The first lady sat next to Trump during the White House dinner. Other attendees at the evening event included Oracle Corp. CEO Safra Catz and Lisa Su, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

The dinner was originally intended to be held in the newly renovated White House Rose Garden, where Trump installed stone pavers and furnished the space with patio tables and a sound system after complaining that the previous grass surface was unsuitable for large events. But inclement weather forced officials to move the event inside.

Wingrove and Dezenski write for Bloomberg.

Artificial intelligence can detect and interpret social features between people from images and videos almost as reliably as humans, according to a new study from the University of Turku in Finland published in the journal Imaging Neuroscience.

People are constantly making quick evaluations about each other’s behavior and interactions. The latest AI models, such as the large language model ChatGPT developed by OpenAI, can describe what is happening in images or videos. However, it has not been clear whether AI’s interpretive capabilities are limited to easily recognizable details or whether it can also interpret complex social information.

Researchers at the Turku PET Center in Finland studied how accurately the popular language model ChatGPT can assess social interaction.

The model was asked to evaluate 138 different social features from videos and pictures. The features described a wide range of social traits such as facial expressions, body movements or characteristics of social interaction, such as co-operation or hostility.

The researchers compared the evaluations made by AI with more than 2,000 similar evaluations made by humans.

The research results showed that the evaluations provided by ChatGPT were very close to those made by humans. AI’s evaluations were even more consistent than those made by a single person.

“Since ChatGPT’s assessment of social features were on average more consistent than those of an individual participant, its evaluations could be trusted even more than those made by a single person. However, the evaluations of several people together are still more accurate than those of artificial intelligence,” says Postdoctoral Researcher Severi Santavirta from the University of Turku.

Artificial intelligence can boost research in neuroscience

The researchers used AI and human participants’ evaluations of social situations to model the brain networks of social perception using functional brain imaging in the second phase of the study.

Before researchers can look at what happens in the human brain when people watch videos or pictures, the social situations they depict need to be assessed. This is where AI proved to be a useful tool.

“The results were strikingly similar when we mapped the brain networks of social perception based on either ChatGPT or people’s social evaluations,” says Santavirta.

Researchers say this suggests that AI can be a practical tool for large-scale and laborious neuroscience experiments, where, for example, interpreting video footage during brain imaging would require significant human effort. AI can automate this process, thereby reducing the cost of data processing and significantly speeding up research.

“Collecting human evaluations required the efforts of more than 2,000 participants and a total of more than 10,000 work hours, while ChatGPT produced the same evaluations in just a few hours,” Santavirta summarizes.

Practical applications from health care to marketing

While the researchers focused on the benefits of AI for brain imaging research, the results suggest that AI could also be used for a wide range of other practical applications.

The automatic evaluation of social situations by AI from video footage could help doctors and nurses, for example, to monitor patients’ well-being. Furthermore, AI could evaluate the likely reception of audiovisual marketing by the target audience or predict abnormal situations from security camera videos.

“The AI does not get tired like a human, but can monitor situations around the clock. In the future, the monitoring of increasingly complex situations can probably be left to artificial intelligence, allowing humans to focus on confirming the most important observations,” Santavirta says.

Where some see artificial intelligence (AI) flattening human creativity, Kaili Meyer (‘17 journalism and mass communication) sees an opportunity to prove that authenticity and individuality are still the heart of communication.

As founder of the sales and web copywriting company Reveal Studio Co., Meyer built her business and later included AI as an extension of her work. She developed tools that train AI to preserve the integrity of an individual’s tone.

Wellness to print

Meyer began her undergraduate studies at Iowa State in kinesiology but realized she had a talent for writing.

“I thought about what I was really good at, and the answer was writing,” Meyer said.

She pivoted to a journalism and mass communication major, with a minor in psychology. Her passion for writing led her to work on student publications in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, where she founded a health and wellness magazine.

That drive to build something from scratch set the tone for her entrepreneurial approach to her business.

Building an AI copywriting company

After graduation, Meyer joined Principal Financial in institutional investing, where she translated complex economic reports into accessible updates for stakeholders. She gained business skills – but her creative energy was missing.

By freelancing on the side for content, copy and magazines, she eventually replaced her salary, left corporate life, and began the process of launching her own company.

Reveal Studio Co started out with direct client interactions, grew to include a template shop, and now includes AI tools.

In 2023, the AI chatbot ChatGPT had its one-year anniversary with over 1.7 billion users. As generative AI went mainstream and pushed into more areas, Meyer was skeptical of the rapidly growing adoption of AI in society. She began to flag AI-written content everywhere and set out to prove that it could never replicate the human voice.

“In doing so, I proved myself wrong,” Meyer said.

As Meyer researched AI, she realized it could be tailored to one’s own persona.

She developed The Complete AI Copy Buddy, a training manual that teaches an AI platform to mimic an individual’s style. By completing a template and submitting it to an AI source, users can acquire anything they need – from content ideas to full pieces such as social posts, emails, web copy and business collateral – all specifically tailored to their audience, brand, and voice.

The launch of the training manual earned $60,000 in two weeks, more than her first year’s corporate salary.

That success propelled Meyer into creating The Sales & Copy Bestie, a custom Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) built from her knowledge in psychology and copywriting. Contractors support her work while she keeps the control and direction.

“If people are going to use AI – which they are – I might as well help them do it better,” she said.

Meyer prioritizes sales psychology, understanding how neuroscience drives decisions and taking that information to form effective and persuasive messages.

“Copy is messaging intended to get somebody to take action,” Meyer explained. “If I don’t understand what makes someone’s brain want to take action, then I can’t write really good copy.”

Meyer’s clients range from educators and creative service providers to lawyers, accountants, and business owners seeking sharper websites, sales pages, or email funnels.

Meyers’ vision of success

Meyer attributes her growth to persistence and a pure mindset.

“I don’t view anything as failure. Everything is just a step closer to where you want to be,” she said.

This year, Meyer plans to balance her entrepreneurial success with her creative side. She is finishing a poetry book, sketching artwork, and outlining her first novel.

“I’ve spent eight years building a really successful business,” Meyer said. “Now I want to build a life outside of work that fulfills me.”