-Welcome to Ai4.

-And welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon joining you from Ai4, an artificial intelligence conference at the MGM Grand.

AI is making headlines these days for its capabilities, as well as its shortcomings, which we'll discuss.

But first, let's start with what is AI.

And for that, we bring in Michael Weiss, Co-Founder of Ai4.

Michael, welcome.

(Michael Weiss) Thanks.

Good to be here.

Hey, everyone.

-For those who are unfamiliar with AI, how would you explain it?

-AI is getting a computer to do tasks that previously only a human could do.

That's AI.

-But computers could do some human tasks, right?

-They could.

And I guess AI is sort of an aspirational idea that we can one day get computers to do all that humans can do and, eventually, even more.

-Now, that sounds scary for some people, right?

-It is scary for some people.

And there is a very real potential that if we don't build AI thoughtfully, it could be harmful to humans.

-And that is something we will be discussing ahead.

But let's talk about the most common uses of AI right now.

What are they?

-Yeah, I mean, you see AI being used a lot in customer service, to automate, you know, chatting on websites or phone calls.

You're starting to see more and more AI being used in cars.

Like Tesla cars actually have a lot of AI that helps them drive.

You're seeing AI be used in healthcare to develop new medicines and discover new drugs.

You're seeing AI also in healthcare to read medical images, like X-rays or MRIs.

So it's really-- you know, this conference, we cover, I think, 35 different industries.

And there's literally thousands of examples now of where AI is actually being used in the real world.

-And tell me about some of the ways that excite you that are being developed right now.

-I am excited by AI and education.

One example is if you have a classroom of, say, 30 students and you want to teach them a topic, it could be algebra, each student isn't at the same level in terms of their learning of, you know, algebra.

And so AI can actually create personalized problems to each student and provide each of the 30 kids with the perfect problem to pull them along their learning journey, which is a really powerful idea.

-That's very exciting.

I also want you to talk about what chatbots are.

I think people here ChatGPT a lot these days and may not know what exactly it is.

What is it?

So ChatGPT is-- it's called a large language model, which is probably confusing, but it's just a chatbot.

And it's a text-based interface where you can just type and literally have a conversation with an AI.

So instead of, you know, chatting with your friend or family member, you're just saying, "Hello."

And the response, "Hello.

How are you?"

comes from an AI.

-How do you use it, personally?

-I use ChatGPT a lot.

It varies.

So let's say I want to learn a historical topic.

Instead of going to a Wikipedia page now, I'll actually go to ChatGPT because it can kind of give me like a more engaging learning experience.

Because I'll ask a question like, you know, "What happened in 1900, Spain?"

And it'll start saying stuff.

And then I can kind of customize exactly what I want to learn based on the AI's response.

-I also found it interesting that you talked about humans, AI eventually replacing humans.

So you gotta get the question, I imagine, a lot.

Will AI take my job?

What is your response?

-Depends on your job.

-What industries are most affected or stand to be most affected?

-There's going to be certain, you know, knowledge worker digital tasks that are going to be taken over by AI.

One example, actually in a roundtable discussion I was in about two hours ago, this company is working on developing customer service VoiceBots so that when you call this company, you're talking to what you think is a human, but it's actually an AI voice.

And right now there's a lot of contact center jobs with people on phones talking to customers; whereas, now instead of contact center jobs being held by humans, they'll be held by AIs.

-Let's walk over here, because there is an example of a company that could possibly threaten the jobs of southern Nevadans.

And it deals with hospitality.

Before I get your take on that, I'm gonna check it out real quick.

Let's head on over here.

And will you tell me what this product is all about?

(Jacob Korniak) Absolutely.

This is Furhat, the world's most advanced social robot.

Our robots are designed to speak and interact with humans.

-And am I too far off to think that this could be in hotels here in Las Vegas someday?

-Absolutely.

These robots are designed to interact with humans just as a hotel receptionist would in answering questions, improving the check-in experience, and being a friendly face to any sort of questions you may have coming into a hotel.

-Well, let me try to ask it some questions.

And I know that I can get a little bit-- I can complain, correct?

-Absolutely.

You can totally complain.

This robot is designed to interact exactly as any sort of regular hotel agent would and resolve any requests you may have.

-Let's see how it responds to me.

All right.

I just got into my hotel room, and the sheets are absolutely filthy.

What are you going to do about it?

-I'm sorry.

I didn't quite catch that.

Could you please repeat what you need assistance with.

-The sheets in my room are dirty.

-I'm so sorry to hear that.

I'll make sure to send housekeeping to your room right away to change the sheets for you.

Can you please provide me with your room number so I can inform them?

-My room is 509.

-Welcome to MGM Grand Hotel.

How may I assist you today?

-All right.

So not perfect.

But let me ask you just a couple more questions about it.

How many places is this in use currently, and at what other types of facilities outside of hotels?

-Absolutely.

So this is in a few hundred universities worldwide and a variety of different robotic research.

But more recently, in hundreds of different companies, using it for a variety of different general interaction.

So as you see today, hotel, but it could also be things like bank tellers or airport gate agents or anything to assist the user experience.

-How at risk are Southern Nevadan jobs because of this technology?

-Sure.

They're not at risk.

You know, this stuff is really meant to help and improve the gate agent experience.

So when those hotel receptionists have a long line out the door and are struggling with staffing and all of the variety of issues they face a day, this is the technology here to improve and help their experience and just make everything run smoother.

-And the last question: Of the places where this is being used right now, have any of them decided to just go with this alone and no people?

-So at this point, no.

There's no scenarios where Furhat is just operating by itself.

It really works best with human oversight and human help.

-Thank you so much for your time.

-So, Michael, as we just saw, the technology is not quite perfect yet for these robotics.

I want to get your take on it, though.

There are varying reports as to how much AI is going to impact Southern Nevada's hospitality industry.

How much do you think it will impact it?

-My perspective and the takeaway that I would share is, for the most part, hospitality jobs are going to be safe for a while.

If you have an in-person job in a hotel.

If you're at, you know, a front desk, if you're serving in a restaurant, if you're working in a casino, if you're a driver, these jobs aren't going to be replaced for a while.

If you have a back office job at a hotel, you know, like customer service, for example, like I mentioned earlier, then, you know, I might pay attention.

-Thank you so much for your time, Michael.

I'm gonna leave you here.

And we're gonna wrap up this little tour with a viral sensation.

This is Spot the robotic dog.

Can I talk to you real quick?

-Yes.

-All right.

Let's see what this can do.

And what is its purpose?

(Beshoy Daoud) This is actually Boston Dynamics' Spot.

But it is equipped with a BLK ARC laser scanner.

It's essentially a mobile mapping device.

So what it does is using Spot as a carrier, we're carrying the scanner into any environment of concern, of interest as well.

And then we're using the scanner to create a 3D map of that area.

And essentially, what we get is a digital twin of this area.

-And you did that for the Conference Center, which we're going to be taking a look at.

But tell me some other areas where this might go into.

-So one of the popular use cases is something like building construction.

A construction site really develops rapidly every week.

So if you were to look at the amount of work that it takes to document the progress, it's really labor intensive and how to keep the status update of that site with respect to the design.

So you can easily satisfy on a mission that it can go out scanning at the end of every day, and it will capture this information.

And then when the engineers come back on site the next day, the data is ready for review.

-This could also be used in a safety, an area of concern for safety, such as?

-If you think about a scenario where there is a fire damage in a building.

So doing an assessment inside a catastrophic area before sending people in to do their tasks.

This assessment is very important to know how--you're going to walk inside there--how you gonna keep people safe in those areas as well.

-Hey, last question: How much does Spot cost?

-Spot Boston Dynamics has a wide variety of accessories, so that can really vary in the prices.

But I think you're looking around anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000.

-Ooh-wee!

That is the price of maybe a condo, a real expensive car.