Last night the President of Iceland, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, went to the US; specifically, California. There he will lead the Icelandic delegation to a meeting of large American companies in the technology industry. This information comes from a statement issued by the Office of the President.
The aim of the trip is to convince the representatives of these companies of the importance of making sure the Icelandic language has a place in the development of the latest language technology solutions. This all to ensure that it will be possible to speak Icelandic with computers and devices, in order to guarantee the future of Icelandic in the digital world.
In addition to the President, the delegation consists of Lilja Alfreðsdóttir, Minister of Culture and Commerce; Halldór Benjamín Þorbergsson, Secretary General of the Confederation of Icelandic Employers; Jóhanna Vigdís Guðmundsdóttir, Secretary General of Almannarómur; Jón Guðnason, Director of the Artificial Intelligence Center at Reykjavík University, and Vilhjálmur Þorsteinn.
The program of the trip begins in San José today, with a visit to the headquarters of Apple and Meta where a meeting will be held with the companies’ representatives. Tomorrow, there will be another meeting, this time with the CEO of the artificial intelligence company Open AI.
They will then continue on to Seattle, where in the evening, the President of Iceland will inaugurate an event at the Nordic Museum in Seattle, where investors and representatives of innovative companies in the technology industry will be gathered. The Nordic Innovation Summit will be held in the same museum the following day, where the President will deliver a speech.
Later that day, the delegation will travel to Amazon and Microsoft headquarters to meet with company officials.
On Friday, the delegation will visit the University of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. They will have meetings with both university representatives and Icelandic staff who conduct research and teaching there. The flight will return to Iceland on Friday evening.
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