Speakers at BizTimes Media’s annual Economic Trends event will provide insights to help attendees understand what’s happening in the ever-shifting high tech landscape and how to take advantage of the opportunities that it presents.
The event will be held on Thursday, Jan. 23, from 7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee. Click here to register.
The speakers will include:
- Jeremy Kedziora, PieperPower endowed chair of artificial intelligence at Milwaukee School of Engineering
- Mara Lord, senior vice president of university engagement and strategic planning for the Medical College of Wisconsin
- Steve Shafer, president and chief operating officer of Milwaukee-based A.O. Smith
The rapidly evolving space of artificial intelligence has received growing interest, investment and scrutiny.
With all the hype surrounding AI’s future and what it might mean for society, Kedziora has a few ideas for what’s to come – including the emergence of agentic systems and integration into daily life. When looking to the future of AI, Kedziora said he speculates there may be a “plateauing” of large language models. Large language models like OpenAI’s Chat GPT or Meta’s Llama require a tremendous amount of data in order to learn and improve.
“There’s a reason why this AI stuff is happening now and didn’t happen 30 years ago,” Kedziora said. “The reason it’s happening now is because the internet kind of digitized all this information and made it accessible. So, you can have somebody web scrape and collect a billion documents, and you have Google’s attempt to digitize books and that sort of thing. It renders those things available for consumption by an AI model so that it can learn.”
Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s federal designation as a biohealth tech hub will catalyze an industry that’s already seeing noteworthy growth and potentially create a new stronghold for a region that’s been traditionally associated with manufacturing, according to Lord, who is helping spearhead the effort.
Last July, Wisconsin officially received $49 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration as part of the federal Tech Hubs program. Wisconsin’s tech hub, focused on the biohealth industry, is working on six interconnected regional projects using the federal funding, ranging from the launch of several mobile screening centers to the creation of a health care data hub. A consortium of 15 private and public partners, including the Wauwatosa-based Medical College of Wisconsin, is helping move all six projects forward.
“Wisconsin’s bio health industry is already growing at a faster rate than other industries in Wisconsin,” said Lord. “That’s in regard to jobs, supply chain, and even wages. That’s what we’re leveraging, that existing strength.”
Jobs in Wisconsin’s biohealth industry grew 10.6% between 2018 and 2021, according to data from BioForward Wisconsin. Biohealth had a direct economic impact of $22 billion in Wisconsin in 2023. Biohealth employees have also increased their wages by nearly 25% since 2018, outpacing the national average of 19% during the same time period, according to BioForward Wisconsin. Altogether, the state’s biohealth industry supports more than 141,000 jobs.
One hope is that Wisconsin’s federal tech hub designation will continue to attract new businesses, both large and small, to the state. That’s already happening, said Lord, as big names, like Eli Lilly and Company, have recently announced investments in Wisconsin.
“We are taking note of the companies that want to be engaged in this,” said Lord. “I recently had a conversation with another biotech company in Washington state, and we’re talking about relocating to Wisconsin. There is a reputational component to being a biohealth tech hub.”
Following the main program, there will be three breakout sessions:
- Facts over fears: Navigating markets in a year of change, presented by Brian Jacobsen of Annex Wealth Management
- Prepare for 2025: Top Challenges and Strategies for Business Leaders, presented by Nancy Mehlberg and Dan Glomski of SVA.
- The Southeastern Wisconsin Economy: A Closer Look, a discussion between economist Michael Knetter and Dave Anderson, senior vice president of BMO.
The Economic Trends event is sponsored by BMO and SVA. Annex Wealth Management is an event partner.
