This is a production WEDU PBS, Tampa, St.

Petersburg, Sarasota.

[music] Coming up, see how problem solvers in Tampa Bay are harnessing the power of innovation from a nonstop autonomous and personalized transportation system, tech that's shaping customer experience and customer service.

The accelerator that NOAA is leaning on to build coastal resilience in Florida to the ethics factor in artificial intelligence.

That's next on Florida This Week.

[music] Welcome back everybody.

I'm Lissette Campos.

We welcome to the panel Amit Agarwal, Director of Investor Relations and Platform Operations at Tampa Bay Wave.

Andrew Carey, the co-founder and CEO of SNAAP Transportation.

Doctor Dmitry Goldgof, the Director of Strategic Programing at the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing at USF, and Alexis Muellner, Editor-in-Chief of the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

We begin with the topic of transportation.

80% of traffic delays and congestion in most metropolitan areas involve vehicles with one single person in them.

Enter SNAAP Transportation.

Andrew Carey is the co-founder and CEO.

He's just back from meetings in Dubai.

Andrew, tell us about the research that has led to this new program that you have.

Thank you so much, Lissette.

Um, the numbers are pretty stark.

Um, when we talk about 80% single occupant vehicles on roads throughout the world, it's kind of a distant idea, but if you talk about harder numbers, there's 1.2 billion vehicles on roads today that's estimated to go to 2 billion vehicles in less than ten years.

So if you think the problem is a lot today, just halfway through that time is pretty significant.

So the response that you all have has been to create the personal rapid transit.

How does that work?

How does that address the issue?

Yeah, so anything that's on the ground or we would even say underground or just problematic, they're not actually helping the traffic congestion issue.

And so SNAAP Transportation's mission is to help alleviate the problems caused by 80% single occupant vehicles.

And the way we do that is by an elevated ribbon wire, ribbon rail.

We consider it an erector set meets a train track.

Mr.

Jetson meets an amusement park monorail.

And while it is very futuristic, we actually have an operating prototype today that you can get in and take it for a ride.

And it's nonstop.

So it's going to key areas.

Yeah, so it's going to be built in any metropolitan area organically.

so you could have a point A to point B, but the key feature is, is that when you get in and go, your A to B is nonstop.

Even though there may be portals or what we call offsets and portals and docks.

You don't stop at those.

This is a nonstop highway for you.

What is the sustainability of this and how is it even powered?

Yeah, so first of all, it's sustainable, seamless, scalable and resilient.

Again, we built it like a train track, an erector set, battery powered, solar charged.

We do not require new road construction or conventional infrastructure.

We can build this in weeks and months rather than decades.

We estimate $8 million a mile versus $100 to $100 and $50 to $240 million a mile for conventional rail systems.

What are some of the cities or places that are considering this?

You just got back from Dubai.

You will be traveling next to Spain...to Barcelona.

Um, so we already have.

We signed a joint venture with the Royal family in Dubai.

last Thursday, was about a year of workup, but we have letters of intent from Sao Paulo, Brazil State Rail.

We have one from eco vista, smart, sustainable city, Jamaica.

We have innumerable requests from the Middle East.

And then there's a much longer list of things that we just haven't been able to catch up with.

Wow, lots of innovation, lots of things to cover.

We're going to move on now to our next area of expertise.

And that is the water.

Tampa Bay Waves Bluetech accelerator is working with entrepreneurs to build up coastal and ocean resilience.

The accelerator is part of a grant initiative from NOAA, which is short for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Amit Agrawal is the Waves director of Investor Relations and Platform Operations.

Amit, congratulations.

This is such a huge deal.

NOAA gave this grant to only 16 accelerators in only 11 states, and Tampa Bay Wave received one of them.

Tell us about the bluetech accelerator.

What is it doing?

Absolutely, thanks for having me here today, Lissette.

We're extremely excited about this accelerator.

This is an award that NOAA granted us and six other organizations that we call The Continuum.

It's a $14 million grant with four specific objectives, especially for the Tampa Bay Wave, dedicated all to fostering Florida's blue economy.

Um, we plan to tackle this in four distinct ways.

But number one, it's supporting innovative technologies that enhance the value chain within the ocean and maritime industries.

Okay.

Um, what's the second area?

The number.

The biggest thing, really, that was put forward on the map was improving our awareness, resilience and response to natural disasters, especially after everything that happened last year.

Yes, yes.

This was definitely something that is affects not just Florida but the national the national economy.

Right.

So this is something that NOAA wanted on their radar.

Um, the other thing too is it's not just resilience.

It's also improving throughput in ocean related industries, so Florida is in a key position as a as a business hub where we need to improve and bring the latest technologies that keep us on par with the rest of the world.

You've used that term throughput.

Throughput.

Explain what that is for the viewer who may not know what that is.

So it spans any industry, right?

So you can be a small shop on the water near a port, right, servicing to customers going on cruises.

But you could also be a shipping industry transporting goods and services from the states to anywhere else or bringing it in.

But the bottom line is you're going to need efficiencies in that chain to make it better, right?

It's a very archaic industry.

And part of this accelerator is bringing in those new technologies.

They may not be the endpoint itself, but maybe something along the way to to enhance that.

Um, that will create bring in new technologies to the region, set us as a leader in innovation and also attract new jobs and talent through these industries.

Who are the startups that you all are working at are working with?

So the startups are a it can represent a wide range.

When you think about efficiencies, we're thinking not just solutions that go in the water, like living seawalls or something like we have a startup that's doing that.

Um, we also have technologies that are in AI, that are in cybersecurity, that are in supply chain management, that can help add value to any of these end points.

Wow, and so when we look at the the impact of the work that's being done in the accelerator, what is the economic impact of blue technology in the state of Florida?

Yeah, absolutely, so Tampa Bay is placed at in both the geographic advantage and economic advantage.

Not only do we have some amazing partners, such as the University of South Florida, such as Florida High Tech Corridor and the St.

Pete Innovation District that are partnering with us on this program.

Um, we also have the opportunity to take what Waves experience has been supporting 620 plus startups over the past 13 years that have raised about $1.6 billion in capital.

That capital comes back to the region.

And that's what builds, um, these companies to help us have having companies that have created 7000 plus jobs.

So when you add the factors in about jobs created.

That's the sort of metrics that we look for to enable.

Well, congratulations.

It's something we'll continue to follow.

We want to move now to our next area of expertise, and that is consumer experience.

Consumer interactions with products and services are another area of focus.

Many innovation trends in customer experience involve artificial intelligence and other innovative technology.

In a Tampa Bay Business Journal gathering of C-suite executives, top leaders talked about what works and what doesn't work.

And here with more is the editor-in-chief, Alexis Muellner, who hosted, was part of this conversation.

Um, who was there?

That must have been quite a brain trust of people.

Well, the Business Journal, I mean, we're in our 44th year as the go to source for B2B business to business news, and we are a convener, and we've done that for a long time where we want to bring together folks to have important conversations that are relevant in the moment.

And these roundtables that we do, we hosted it at the offices of CDW in downtown Tampa, and it's a cross-section of different industry.

We had the box.

We had KPMG, the financial firm, another financial firm called Webull.

Pinellas County Schools, TECO, some health systems like Baycare and Orlando Health.

And the idea was to to explore this whole emerging trend of what's known as CX or customer experience.

Okay, and what would you say stood out to you the most?

Well, a couple I mean, we're all familiar with the moment where we're on the phone and we want to have a human voice representative.

You know, may I find a human to talk to?

And so that's that's kind of the defining, uh, the element that runs through all these organizations is how do you balance this notion of human contact with the efficiencies that come with using technology to improve the customer experience?

And they're all sort of balancing that.

What emerged that I was surprised about was this notion of self-service being a key component these days.

You know, Baycare, for example, is really focused on what helping people self schedule things, for example.

Um, and that they're working to figure out ways to make that a seamless experience.

TECO mostly focuses on move ins and move outs, and so the more they can make that process, uh, you know, self self-defining, the easier and more efficient it is for them.

And things like that were really compelling and just sort of, again, uh, begin to do investment.

KPMG, a massive financial firm, is spending billions over the next five years working with third party folks, which is unusual for them to build internal systems.

We're talking not only about exterior, um, exposure, but also what happens internally in terms of recruitment and onboarding people.

And these are ways that AI also falls into the picture.

So many people think of the chat bot, the chat bots, and um, and so does that work or does it not work?

What was the feedback that you heard from the executives?

Well, it's beginning to work better.

I was on the phone with, uh, we had an issue with our refrigerator, and I was on the phone with Samsung, and they said at the beginning of the call, you know, we're working on our AI models, our language models, so bear with us.

And the voice sounds even more human than ever, right?

So in the case of Weeble, which is another financial services firm, they've now in rolling out their chatbots, have reduced their customer or made more efficient their customer interactions by 50%.

And that was beyond their expectations.

And so I think they're getting to the point where there are a lot of trial and error.

You know, the motto is fail fast and learn faster.

And so I think, you know, organizations across the board are working on ways to, you know, again, balance this notion of, I want you to speak to a human and, and improving efficiencies so that they can improve the bottom line, improve their customer experience more broadly.

The last question that I have for you is more about on the journalism side.

I know that the Tampa Bay Business Journal has been tracking changes involving artificial intelligence for years.

Um, and what are the things that you're seeing happen?

Change right in front of your eyes?

Well, we're actively following tech and startups.

Tampa Bay Wave is a focal point of our coverage.

For example, Angelica Rubin is our technology and startups reporter who does a terrific job.

We have our Tampa Bay info newsletter that comes out every week, and so we're always looking for sourcing and people to help us understand what's relevant and important.

And AI is dominating most conversations around funding, around what's happening at USF, around cybersecurity, around economic development more broadly as a key asset and pillar for the next five, ten, fifteen years in this community to establish startups and communities, companies that are really working, and that's our role.

So many young professionals are concerned that the the use of AI will eliminate a lot of the jobs that they start with in their industry to learn.

That's a concern, and we're hearing a lot about that.

There's a lot of research being done, and I think it's still yet to shake out.

I think that there more importantly, is helping people understand ethical ways to use AI.

And certainly the journalism world is understanding how it can make your time more efficient.

I mean, I'm exploring ways that that can help in terms of research and tools.

But you're right.

I think there is valid concern on the part of organizations.

People looking for a job or careers to say, how am I going to be?

Is the human touch going?

To going to sort of make it hard for me to find jobs where I used to be have opportunity.

Right, and you brought up the ethics, the, the E word, the ethics of artificial intelligence.

And for that, we're going to turn to our expert on the panel.

Artificial intelligence is being integrated into aspects of our daily lives more than we realize.

Folks with the benefits also come risks.

Dr.

Goldgof talks to us about the ethics of AI.

Welcome to the panel.

First of all, tell us about your work at the college.

Well, so first let me introduce the college, which is just formed in August.

It's first in Florida and one of the first in the nation's focused on AI in cybersecurity and computing.

It is a cover all aspects of industry and has about 3000 students and growing.

So it is really a hub for for workforce development for the region and nation.

And uh, and ethics is incorporated in all aspects of, uh, college experience.

Yes.

It's actually uh, always was in and was used to be called computer ethics.

And now it's more focused on AI ethics.

How do we make AI trustworthy?

Yes, so there is a number of directions for the trustworthy AI one, which is partially my immediate research.

Uh, effort is, uh, explainable AI.

It's AI, which can explain the decisions and, uh, and then shows transparency.

Okay.

Uh, the That's the only way the AI can be used for mission critical applications, rather than as a small tools to increase productivity here and there.

One of the things that people who are concerned about AI, they talk about the lack of regulation, that it seems like the Wild West out there where there are very few rules.

Um, and so they ask a lot of questions about ethically, how should AI be used?

Um, tell us about the university's effort, the college's efforts in the arena of enforcement and regulation.

Well, so the college focuses on education.

So?

So we include education in ethics class.

And also we increasing our faculty with expertise in AI as well as AI law.

Recently hired faculty in that area.

Now in terms of regulation of AI, the trouble is that The rapid development of AI, and one example is the European regulation of AI, where taking a few years to develop prior, the large language models and then large language models come in and kind of change everything.

They started redoing it for for large language models.

And then agentic AI came in and changed everything again.

So it's difficult to establish efficient regulations.

And so that's an ongoing effort.

Yes, it's, it's again coming back to the explainable AI.

That's the only way you can form regulations as well.

And because that's that's the difference between just being able to process AI product without knowing where it came from.

Yes, so, so my area of expertise is the medical AI.

So it can give an example of that.

If you have an x-ray and it's automatically utilized to to diagnose pneumonia, for example, you can show with explainable AI which area of the image the decision is based on.

And if it's not in the lungs, then clearly that's a mistaken classification.

Correct.

And so so this kind of explainability tools are really critical for even acceptance of AI in many applications.

So before we we go on to the next segment, I wanted to ask you, what are the big stories in each of your areas?

But I'd love to get your take on on AI and what concerns you the most, or maybe what makes you most hopeful?

Amit, when you hear, you know, doctor, talk about transparency and and AI and all the different applications, how what are you looking at in terms of how AI is working with your accelerators?

Yes, absolutely.

We see a number.

I mean, almost every technology that comes through our program has some sort of AI component in this day and age.

I think the biggest thing is one, make sure your AI is actually doing something unique to Doctor Goggles point.

There are many AIS that simply do something faster, but are you doing something novel with it?

Right?

That's number one that we look for.

Number two.

Um, every single company is now at an earlier stage being asked to be more compliant, both with ethics, both with privacy, both with simply, uh, integrating with large corporates is an incredibly high risk for them.

Third party risk is the number one factor that prevents innovation from entering larger, larger scale, uh, service providers.

Wow, and so it's a very risky game.

Now, we're seeing AI businesses that are helping create regulations and safeguards and guardrails to help enterprises integrate that technology.

We actually have one at who's a professor at the Bellini College building his own company, doing that very thing.

So.

Andrew, when you look at AI, um, is there a concern that, um, copyright and, and original content being protected or not protected, being pirated?

Where do you see all of this.

At least from our perspective at SNAAP transportation, those are probably less of our concerns around copyright and ownership.

We would absolutely and lean into the efficiencies that we're going to come for a system like we're trying to build things that simply AI can just do better than others.

I will say that on my return from Dubai, I was at the Gitex Global conference.

It's the largest technology conference in the world.

And if there were 25,000 exhibitors, 20,000 of them were AI.

And so it is an ever present issue around the world.

Um, so leave it there.

What is the pain point with AI in the business community?

Alexis?

Well, I think I had two thoughts.

One was was hyper local in terms of our application and the other is existential in the global sense.

And, you know, for us, I think there are massive efficiencies to be gained in the practice of journalism.

But there are hallucinations and we know them to be true.

And from looking at images on Mars and wondering if that's AI, is that obelisk there a real thing to just just being mindful that you need to check everything?

Um, I think, you know, there's a lot of talk about the broader existential threat of machines becoming more intelligent than us and not necessarily, um, you know, being in favor of working for the benefit of humans.

So, I mean, I think those are things that we're sort of thinking dominating my thoughts when it comes to AI, but using it to be more efficient.

These are things that I think are very, you know, not only in the business world that we cover, but also internally.

Okay, so I'd I'd love to hear from each of you and, you know, 40s or less.

What are the other big stories or trends that you think are of interest to our viewers?

Amit, I'd like to start with you.

Yeah, in our space specifically, I think one of the biggest discussion points now is who's responsible for funding early stage tech in infrastructure solutions.

They're incredibly capital intensive.

Um, so when you think about public or private funding, who's responsible to take that lead?

Um, I think part of our accelerator's goal with the Bluetech program is to evaluate that public private partnership model and see where where we can gain efficiencies and who takes the lead.

So you're busy.

A little busy.

What would you say is the most exciting news in your world?

And the Bellini College?

Yeah, so I think the starting of the Bellini College is the most exciting news.

We were able to hire a number of new faculty in a number of new areas, spanning AI and cybersecurity and actually AI for cybersecurity, cybersecurity for AI.

And it provides a lot of opportunities for both start ups and local business to to use this this expertise to to move on the application front.

And plenty of plenty of universities say that they're doing things in AI and in cybersecurity.

But what is happening at the Bellini College is more intense combined.

It's different, isn't it?

Yes, so it's more focused in a number of ways.

Number one, we introduce a new degree.

Bachelor degree in AI specifically.

And also it's a hub and spoke model where we bring the expertise from other colleges to, to to to look at the application of AI and cybersecurity in the, in their specialization.

And you and you were telling me earlier that USF is the first in Florida to do this.

Yes.

Congratulations.

Congratulations.

Um, Andrew, tell me what's important or trending in your neck of the woods.

I'm going to have to just ride the coattails of a meet and the the balance between public private reliance on government for funding.

It is something that we do brag about is that we are a woman, majority owned company, minority investor led.

We own all of our IP and we're a completely closed loop system.

So when we go out, we say, this is who we are, join us.

So that's the first one.

I think the second one is is coming out of Dubai and the Gitex conference and then going to Barcelona.

I'll be speaking on the topic of the future of cities and the future of mobility.

And so to the backdrop of so much of these different components that we've discussed today, they're always sitting ever present.

But if you now take a look at metropolitan areas and cities and say, how does this all apply to our ecosystem more broadly is something that we speak to, not just providing an ecosystem for mobility, but it's better quality of life, accessibility, job creation, and the other components of our work.

In in our background work that that we did.

You were very you gave the example of that.

So many times we look at mass transit as the solution, but we're looking at moving mass groups of people.

Um, how do you explain or pivot the person's attention towards the issue of that single occupant vehicle?

It is most often this is an educating experience for sure.

Um, but we would give examples of people typically don't go to the airport in mass.

They go one person, two person.

You might have a team, you might have a theater group, but it's typically going as a person or two.

And so why are we building mass transit systems that are then underutilized at SNAAP?

We don't say, don't do these things.

We don't say don't make better autonomous vehicles, better batteries and so forth.

But what we say is take, you know, take a step back.

And if you keep doing the same thing infrastructure, lack of a sustainable infrastructure, environmental degradation, pollution, all the things we complain about.

But the open door and the open conversations around innovation, particularly in our world, um, is is uh, is a lot of crickets.

Okay, Alexis, you you're so involved in the community.

The Tampa Bay Business Journal does so much um, we've talked about journalism a lot.

What is what is something else that that is important to you?

Well, of course, the business journals top stories are on our website right now, so we invite everybody to subscribe.

I am the long time volunteer chair of the board of the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, and my wife is a graphic designer.

She had a fantastic idea, which is to say, if you're a veteran or a service member or a family member of either of those and you have an affinity for photography, send us your images anytime.

Between World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, South Sudan and now, and by the deadline on August 15th, we had 520 submissions from around the world.

And the idea is to say, uh, what is it like to have a life in service?

And we have such a pedigree in this community.

With MacDill, the show goes up late October.

It's going to run through mid-January at Mopar in Ybor.

And it's just the work is so compelling I can't even.

I'm so excited about it that, uh, you know, we're going to have an online gallery.

It wasn't a competition.

It was designed to say, you know, we're going to build an archive and help people understand life and service.

It's a simple concept.

And wow, has it, has it born out.

Thank you for your for sharing that with us.

That's really exciting.

And all of you, thank you so much for coming and sharing your time and your expertise with us.

Once again, thank you to our panelists, Andrew Carey of SNAAP Transportation, Amit Agarwal of the Tampa Bay Wave, Dmitry Goldgof of the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing at USF, and Alexis Muellner of the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

Thanks for watching, everybody.

We'll see you next week.