At Issue with Mark Welp
From 18 Months to 18 Minutes: AI at Work
Clip: Season 4 Episode 5 | 3m 31sVideo has Closed Captions
One workplace task reportedly fell from 18 months to 18 minutes with help from AI.
Bradley professor Rob Prescott shares an example from a former Caterpillar executive who said AI reduced an 18-month information task to 18 minutes. Prescott and Yun Wang discuss workplace efficiency, the jobs AI may change and the new roles the technology is also expected to create.
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At Issue with Mark Welp is a local public television program presented by WTVP
At Issue with Mark Welp
From 18 Months to 18 Minutes: AI at Work
Clip: Season 4 Episode 5 | 3m 31sVideo has Closed Captions
Bradley professor Rob Prescott shares an example from a former Caterpillar executive who said AI reduced an 18-month information task to 18 minutes. Prescott and Yun Wang discuss workplace efficiency, the jobs AI may change and the new roles the technology is also expected to create.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipCan you tell us how businesses and companies are using this to, I don't know, either make more money, be more profitable, or streamline the way they make products?
Can you give us some examples of maybe how that works?
- I heard one just today from our CEO, or CFO at Bradley.
He had worked at Caterpillar and was a CFO for a parts area of the company.
And he used to have to do inventories to find certain kinds of parts to make recommendations to people in his unit.
"You purchase this with this quality of metal."
And there were things he would have to do by hand that might take, he said, 18 months to get done.
And with AI, it's 18 minutes.
Think of all of the labor just in the searching and combing through all of that information to come up with what was necessary for that unit's leader to make a decision and to invest there.
Often it's about time saving.
But I have other alumni I talk to regularly who are just thrilled with the applications.
Sometimes it's in communications and just making it easier to shape a message.
Or they felt insecure in their own language use and so they start with ChatGPT, then make sure everything is true and do the final edit and proofreading.
And again, it makes them more efficient.
Maybe they sound even more professional than they would on their own.
So there are just so many applications.
There's hardly a workplace where it doesn't have some positive potential.
- So, you brought up some interesting things there that are beneficial, but some people say could potentially be negative.
Now, 18 months to 18 minutes, that sounds great, but is that gonna take away somebody's job potentially?
If you're streamlining that much, are you gonna need fewer people to get things done maybe at a company?
- Wow, this is a really good question and many people have already asked me about it.
Okay, so, AI is going to change jobs for sure, yeah.
Meanwhile, it's gonna too create new job opportunities.
Think about cyber and IT in the past.
So that is the previous technology innovation.
See how many?
Now, literally every company, every organization, they have an IT department.
They support the cyber, cyber security across their company, across the organization.
Similarly, now we are in the age of AI.
So like all the IT department and they either are going to have a component of AI or they are going to establish a new AI department.
The purpose is to help the business, the organization to best utilize AI responsibly and effectively.
So AI is just a tool.
It does not have responsibility.
It is eventually, it's the people who use it take the responsibility and accountability and make decision whether the output or the information provided by AI is true or not.
Sometimes they give people wrong information, yeah.
AI in the Classroom: Who Does the Thinking?
Video has Closed Captions
Clip: S4 Ep5 | 2m 47s | AI can write a paper, but Bradley professors say it cannot replace critical thinking. (2m 47s)
Video has Closed Captions
Clip: S4 Ep5 | 2m 3s | Should AI write a eulogy? One professor says some human work should stay human. (2m 3s)
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