US First Lady Melania talks about AI in education: "The era of robots has arrived"

U.S. First Lady Melania Trump emphasized at an event at the White House on Thursday that cultivating students' artificial intelligence literacy from an early age is key to the United States' success in global competition. The conference brought together cabinet officials and technology industry giants to promote the application of AI in K-12 elementary education.

White House officials say AI education is critical to ensuring U.S. competitiveness in the field. The government is increasing investment in artificial intelligence-related projects and funding, and emphasizes that AI will assist the American workforce rather than replace it. Melania Trump said at the meeting: "The robots have arrived and our future is no longer science fiction."

Just a month ago, the First Lady's Office announced the launch of the "AI Era Challenge" for students and teachers. This conference is also part of the White House AI Education Working Group. Companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Code.org, IBM and OpenAI also pledged to increase their support for AI education at the event. Energy Secretary Chris Wright pointed out that to meet the development needs of AI, the United States must "large-scale increase in power production capacity."

Also present at the event were technology leaders such as White House Special Officer for AI and Cryptocurrency David Sachs, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Notably, the meeting did not touch on topics such as child safety and mental health. Recently, high-profile media reports reported that teenagers committed suicide after interacting with AI chatbots, sparking public concern. The first lady pushed for the passage of the "TAKE IT DOWN Act" earlier this year. The law is intended to strengthen the protection of sexual images (including AI-generated content) and combat the spread of deepfakes and revenge porn. Despite this, Melania did not focus on the mental health and safety of children in school environments with AI at the conference.

President Donald Trump did not attend the event.