Looking back at the evolution of web-based technology over the past three decades, it’s impossible to think of one industry or line of work that hasn’t been shaped by the internet in some way. And 30 years from now, the same will likely be said for artificial intelligence. Many industries won’t have to wait nearly that long as AI continues to advance at a staggering pace.
“There’s nothing that won’t be touched by this. I would not have felt that two years ago but it’s undisputable now,” said Kent Tabor, president and chief technology officer of Waukesha-based industrial electronics manufacturer EmbedTek.
The company has used AI for years to develop software and custom design embedded computers, sensors and cameras for original equipment manufacturers serving various industries including health care, sports, logistics and security. Even to Tabor, who has tracked the evolution of AI over the years, AI has arrived faster than expected, and he said it’s difficult to “predict where this will end up.”
Driving health care efficiencies
To help illustrate just one of many ways AI is shaping the world of health care,
Credit: Embedtek
Tabor pointed to EmbedTek’s high-speed pill counter for pharmacies. The system uses an AI-powered camera to identify, count and sort a variety of pill sizes and shapes as they drop from the machine. This application replaces the need for manual sorting of highly sensitive prescription medications, allowing the pharmacy to save time and labor costs, improve accuracy and prevent theft, according to EmbedTek’s website. It also eliminates the many variables that inevitably come with human labor.
“Someone who’s good at it can usually count 30 pills in less than 10 seconds, but they’re a skilled worker, so what happens when that person calls in sick? That efficiency goes away,” said Tabor. “Companies like to have that predictability.”
AI’s speed and precision can play a vital role when time is of the essence – as it often is in the delivery of life-saving medical treatment, such as radiology. Aurora Health Care in 2019 began leveraging AI to detect and treat strokes more efficiently. The system’s health information technology department implemented an “orchestrating” AI program that analyzes mass amounts of stroke imaging data from multiple sources and communicates results directly to providers.
“What this means is that the care team is now being better informed about what they should be looking at in a much faster time,” said Tim Henidias, director of enterprise imaging for Advocate Health Care and Aurora Health Care.
Since it was rolled out across all of Aurora Health Care’s Wisconsin sites and Advocate Health Care’s Illinois sites, the platform has reduced the time it takes to deliver results from 25 to six minutes. That’s the difference between life and death for some patients, not to mention long-term health outcomes, said Henidias.
What’s more, as the health care industry navigates an ongoing worker shortage and increased costs of labor, AI offers a potential solution.
“It drives efficiency of my staff, so I’m not growing and adding the cost, but I’m able to then expand services into other areas that are underserved and start tackling their issues,” said Henidias. “We’re adding a lot more technology and a lot more complexity at a much slower staffing growth rate than traditional technology. What AI is doing is reducing the mundane tasks that overwhelm my team and not only does it read the data, but it also generates graphical data points that make it visual and consumable. … It simplifies what my team has to do in order to be successful.”
Pushing creative limits
The arts and creative industries sit on the other end of the spectrum when it comes to how AI is being used and even talked about. Unlike industries like manufacturing, technology and health care, where some are touting AI as a tool to boost efficiency and productivity, there’s ongoing debate over how the emergence of newer generative AI technology can (and should) be used in the art world and whether those uses are ultimately positive or negative.
This debate has played out in real time at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, where students are being encouraged to engage and experiment with AI tools like digital image generator DALL-E – and even going so far as to organize a fund to cover students’ access to those platforms.
“When DALL-E-2 became useful and other image generators like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney came to the fore, it went like a wave through the college,” said Ben Dembroski, managing director of emerging technology and institutional labs at MIAD. “We had some students freaking out about it in terms of, ‘we’re not going to need illustrators anymore,’ ‘this is going to take all our jobs,’ and then you had other students who were generally excited about it.”
As head of MIAD’s Lubar Emerging Technology Center, Dembroski has tracked AI’s early growth and its potential impact on the art world for the past few years. Now that it’s here, he’s helping students adapt to and get comfortable with the technology, so they’re equipped to use it in their careers after graduation.
One fine arts student at the ETC last semester used DALL-E for inspiration on a sculpture she created. Another taught himself how to use AI, rather than expensive equipment, for motion capture on an animation project.
In the face of uncertainty around just how AI will shape the job market for creatives and artists going forward, MIAD is taking a holistic approach to preparing students for the real world.
“In the very short term, the people that are going to be most valuable to companies are the people who know what questions to ask of AI in which order,” said Dembroski. “… We’re really encouraging our students to understand that just by asking the questions of AI in their personal work, what they’re doing is they’re honing their skills so that when they enter the job marketplace next year or in two years, they’ll be entering a job marketplace where everybody is going to be trying to figure this out.”
Rather than worrying about whether their future job will be displaced by AI, students are encouraged to develop “the skillset to be adaptable and valuable to a company as that displacement occurs,” he added.
Understanding the consumer
Marketers have long been using AI to gather insight on their customers and track consumer behavior.
For New Berlin-based experience marketing firm GMR Marketing, AI is useful in keeping clients’ brands top of mind, or as Joseph Cera, head of data science frames it, “isolating the hallmarks of memory making.” In other words, the firm has used AI to identify key elements, or markers, of large-scale experiences – think conventions, concerts, sporting events – that predict the likelihood of a consumer remembering a certain brand when faced with a purchase decision.
Many of GMR’s clients are fintech companies. In researching the range of event experiences within that industry, the firm identified a subtle nuance in how the scale and format of an event shapes consumers’ impression of a financial services company.
“A lot of the (event) experiences that we saw were designed to draw in big groups of people, with competitive games and knowledge contests to test your knowledge on financial health, said Cera. “What our data suggested is that some of these group experiences could actually create friction between the participants, because if you’re doing a trivia contest and it’s revealed that you don’t have financial knowledge, that can be embarrassing. These AI tools helped us understand that in some settings, large group activities were not creating positive embedded memories for people.”
GMR now uses that insight to guide fintech clients in their event marketing decisions.
