Roberts says Comcast execs 'despondent' after Time Warner Cable, sees artificial intelligence as big trend

Comcast Corp. CEO Brian Roberts said Friday that he believes one of the biggest business trends will be "artificial intelligence," in which computers do tasks once done by people, leading to smart cities and smart cars.

In a question-and-answer format, Roberts spoke conversationally to about 1,200 executives, lawyers, city and state officials, and others at the annual Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce breakfast .

Before Roberts' remarks, Drexel University president John Fry officially took over as the chamber's board chairman, replacing Exelon Corp.'s Dennis O'Brien. Fry said he believed that Philadelphia could be one of the world's 25 top-tier cities, but that civic leaders couldn't be complacent because "as we sit down here for breakfast, [competing cities] are preparing to eat our lunch."

Fry said the region had to embrace both innovation and inclusion. Civic leaders have to be more urgent in transforming the region, he said.

Sitting on a stage before the chamber breakfast crowd, Roberts spoke for about 30 minutes, responding to questions from NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker, a Philadelphia native. Comcast owns NBC News through its NBCUniversal subsidiary.

He noted that Comcast's executives were "despondent" after they "threw in the towel" on the proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable in 2015 because of  opposition to the deal from the government and the public. But the company also used the opportunity to focus its efforts on improving the Comcast customer experience, he said.

Roberts demonstrated for the crowd how the Netflix on-demand streaming service will be integrated into Xfinity's X1 set-top box. Both consumers and the Federal Communications Commission have been urging cable companies to modernize the set-top box experience. Roberts referred to the cable box as "the bane of our existence."

Dreamworks Animation, the Hollywood studio Comcast acquired earlier this year for $3.8 billion, enables Comcast to push into children's entertainment, Roberts said.

"Kids are an area [in which] we don't traditionally have a big business," he said, indicating that Comcast/NBCUniversal could seek to "reimagine" Shrek, Dreamworks' biggest franchise.

The company's new skyscraper, which will be the tallest in Philadelphia, is slated to open in 2018. As for talk on whether Comcast would consider relocating its headquarters to New York or another city, Roberts said, "It's not even a discussion."