Need help designing a new logo for your business?
Rewriting a stale job description?
Toning down that email before sending it to your boss?
Those in the Wichita Business Journal's Emerging Leaders program say they're already embracing artificial intelligence tools in the workplace, while recognizing that it does come with some limitations. And, the participants say AI may be more useful than ever given the difficulties local employers are having in hiring.
During a roundtable discussion Thursday, Monica Shuey said she uses a platform called Copy.ai to write help write copy for her marketing firm, Harmony Marketing.
"AI will usually get you pretty close to what you're trying to say, or for me I usually use it mostly for inspiration because it's never quite there," Shuey said. "I think that obviously AI will start taking over in a lot of ways with imagery, with copywriting, with all kinds of different facets."
In real estate, Henry Luu of Keller Williams Signature Partners said there's been some discussion about what AI means for the future of roles like real estate attorneys and transaction coordinators.
"Some agents have been kind of trying to phase out their real estate attorneys as far as, like, contracts and things go," Luu said.
If AI can nearly do it all, are the Emerging Leaders worried about the tool replacing employees?
"Well, we can't hire anybody," Joey Krsnich, of ICT Insurange Group, put it frankly. "I can't get anybody to reply to an Indeed ad."
With his industry facing a shortage of engineers over the next decade, Matt Tye of GSI Engineering said his organization is already looking at ways to harness technology to leverage a smaller workforce. For example, using AI to monitor the health of infrastructure, such as bridges, roads and water systems.
"Instead of having a guy sitting there, you know, running through data all day long, you've got these systems that are keeping track of and recognizing trends," Tye said. "There's some really, really cool stuff out there."
From a health care perspective, Amanda Mogoi, who runs M-Care, said she has concerns about platforms that use concierge medicine, in which patients can type in their symptoms and the platform automatically prescribes a medication.
"We're getting away from personalization in a lot of aspects," Mogoi said. "I don't think that's the best way to do business, but I know that a lot of businesses are doing things that way now."
No matter the benefits, the use of AI in the workplace poses all kinds of complex questions, said Gwen Kochman of United Way of the Plains.
"What that means for workplace policy — whether or not the use of AI is encouraged or discouraged? Are there parameters around it? And how do you even begin to address what those parameters look like? Because I don't know that we completely understand the capacity of it as it is, but it's moving so fast," Kochman said.
Josh Huckriede of WSU Tech and Emily Mullins of Wichita State University Foundation and Alumni Engagement were also participants in the Thursday roundtable.
