For the second day of their visit to Pittsburgh, top U.S. and European officials toured some of the Steel City’s innovative research facilities and companies, taking a closer look at the city’s work in initiatives ranging from COVID-19 vaccine research to self-driving cars to trips into outer space.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai came to Pittsburgh on Wednesday, along with two officials from the European Union, for the inaugural meeting of the newly formed U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council, a joint partnership that aims to tackle things like tech development, manufacturing, workforce needs and climate change.
The group met at Mill 19 in Hazelwood Green, a redeveloped industrial site that now serves as a hub for robotics and innovation, for a day of discussions related to tech and trade. The council came out of the first day with a list of five outcomes focused on artificial intelligence, supply chains, investment screening, export control and combating non-market, trade distortive practices.
On Thursday, the delegation started at Argo AI, a self-driving vehicle startup in the Strip District, to learn how the autonomous cars work and how the tech could benefit drivers.
Mr. Blinken continued on to tour a biomedical research facility at the University of Pittsburgh and a labor roundtable discussion in the South Side. Valdis Dombrovskis, trade commissioner, the executive vice president for An Economy that Works for People and part of the EU delegation, met with Pitt students to answer questions about the trade council. And Ms. Raimondo stopped at Astrobotic, a space startup in the North Side.
Pittsburgh, Mr. Blinken told labor leaders later in the day Thursday, is a “microcosm of so many positive things we’ve been trying to do across the country.” That’s why, he continued, the group chose it to hold the first meeting for the newly formed council.
The ‘next inflection point’
Pittsburghers are used to seeing self-driving cars with the spinning lidar on top moving around city streets, but Argo AI CEO Bryan Salesky took a step back to explain to the delegation how the cars work.
With two drivers in the vehicle for safety, the autonomous cars rely on a set of sensors, lidar and cameras, and intricate software to take in its surroundings and make decisions about how and where to move.
Just like seatbelts and air bags, Mr. Salesky said self-driving cars will be the “next inflection point” for safety. “This really is life-saving technology.”
The delegation’s first question: How soon will we see these autonomous cars be deployed, not just for testing? For Argo, and some of its competitors, the goal is 2023.
Ms. Tai asked how Argo is working to ensure the artificial intelligence that the cars rely on is able to recognize all different types of people and doesn’t make assumptions.
To avoid any tech that is built with bias baked in, Mr. Salesky said Argo focused on diversity in its human teams and in the settings where its cars go to learn.
“The vehicle learns from the diversity of the population,” he said, adding that that’s part of the reason Argo is working to test its technology in cities around the nation.
Joking that the members of the delegation hadn’t driven themselves in quite a while and whole-heartedly felt a self-driving car would be a safer option than any of them getting behind the wheel, Ms. Raimondo asked how Argo was working to make consumers comfortable with the idea of a car that drove itself.
To demonstrate, Mr. Salesky pointed to a screen in front of the delegation that showed in black and white what a self-driving car might “see” as it moved on a road.
The footage, which looked somewhat like what you might see if you watched a tape from a security camera, would also play in the back of the autonomous car, Mr. Salesky said, giving the rider a glimpse into how and why the vehicle made its decisions.
Viruses and vaccines
Later Thursday, Mr. Blinken toured a biomedical research facility at the University of Pittsburgh with university Chancellor Patrick Gallagher and Dr. Anantha Shekhar, the senior vice chancellor for the health sciences.
The group took a look at some cells that had been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and learned more about the research Pitt is doing to protect against the spread of the virus and other infectious diseases.
Mr. Blinken toured the Vaccine Research Center at one of Pitt’s biomedical research facilities in Oakland. He spoke with researchers studying the virus and examining different approaches to slow the spread and develop vaccines.
Pitt was one of the first facilities in the U.S. to receive samples of the novel coronavirus in February 2020, university officials said.
“Going after the virus in multiple ways is how we beat the shapeshifter,” said Dr. Paul Duprex, who holds the Jonas Salk Chair of Vaccine Research at Pitt and hosted Mr. Blinken’s tour. “Combinations of different antibodies, combinations of nanobodies with antibodies, different vaccines — these are all key to defeating the virus and finding a way out of the pandemic.”
Supporting the workforce
Looking to continue the workforce discussion from the start of the trade council and the Biden administration’s overall push to strengthen and support labor unions, Mr. Blinken stopped at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5 on the South Side.
“We believe strongly — the president believes strongly — that labor groups have to be our partner in policy, and that includes foreign policy,” Mr. Blinken said.
Thursday’s discussion included representatives from IBEW, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, the United Steelworkers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Service Employees International Union, and the Communications Workers of America.
Jose Fernandez, the under secretary for economic growth, energy and the environment at the U.S. State Department, opened the discussion by telling the group he had close connections to labor unions. His mother was a seamstress in New Jersey and part of a labor union that dates back to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911.
The discussion was part of an effort to fulfill the Biden administration’s mission to build an economy from “the bottom up and middle out,” he said.
Of the five main outcomes the group outlined Wednesday, all will impact labor and workers in some way, Mr. Blinken told the group.
When it came to the commitment to rebalance the supply chain for semiconductors, that included a need to find more ways, and more companies, to produce the computer chips.
Part of promoting innovative and fair artificial intelligence systems includes examining how the software impacts the labor force.
Commitment to investment screening should also bring an awareness of the impact federal and foreign investment can have on local companies, he said.
The secretary told the group a sentiment he also brought up in Wednesday’s workforce development panel.
Sitting around the table 100 years ago, the government officials and labor leaders may have considered the best way to measure the wealth of a nation. At that time, it would have been defined by things like the nation’s land mass, the size of its population, the strength of its military and the abundance of its natural resources
“All of those things still matter,” Mr. Blinken said. But today, the “answer, more than ever before, is its human resources, its people, its workers.
“And the job of the government … is to do everything we can to unleash those resources, to support them, to defend them, to protect them and to allow them to reach their full potential.”
Lauren Rosenblatt: lrosenblatt@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1565.
First Published: September 30, 2021, 2:21 p.m.
Updated: September 30, 2021, 7:45 p.m.
