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The basics:
- NJBIZ panelists share real-world AI adoption across key sectors
- Legal, finance, tech and education leaders stress ethical AI adoption
- Health care applications for AI include patient care, efficiency
- NJIT investing $10M to integrate AI tools into its curriculum
NJBIZ hosted a special panel discussion July 29 about a subject of much import here in New Jersey and beyond: artificial intelligence.
As the technology rapidly becomes more integrated into everyday life, that sets up a major adjustment period for individuals, businesses, sectors and more.
Hosted by NJBIZ Chief Editor Jeffrey Kanige, the discussion featured an esteemed group of panelists:
- Joshua Levy; director, Business & Commercial Litigation Group, firm general counsel, AI & Emerging Technologies Committee chair; Gibbons PC
- Carl Mazzanti, co-founder and president, eMazzanti Technologies
- Hrishikesh Pippadipally, CIO, Wiss
- Mike Stubna, director of software engineering and data science, Hackensack Meridian Health
- Oya Tukel, dean of the Martin Tuchman School of Management, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Status check
“I’d like to start with sort of an assessment from each of you about where you are with AI right now,” Kanige opened. “Anecdotally, I can tell you, for example, with the generative AI programs and applications that we use in our work, there’s been a noticeable improvement in the last – even just eight months. So, it seems as though the technology is moving pretty quickly.
“It’s being adopted fairly widely – it’s almost everywhere now. … And so I just want to get a sense for where you all are. Either you personally in your work; with what your institutions/organizations are doing; or what your clients and customers are doing with it.”
Stubna led off. “We’re using AI in almost every aspect of our business today,” he said. “Broadly speaking, there’s four key areas that we’re focused on. The first is creating personalized health experiences and using these AI tools for precision medicine, precision treatment. We’re enhancing disease detection. We’re alleviating employee burnout. And we’re streamlining administration efficiencies.
“In order to accomplish these things and bring this change to our health care system, we really have four key mechanisms,” reiterated Stubna:
It’s a marathon
“We feel that AI adoption is a process, not an event,” said Pippadipally. He noted that Wiss is at the intersection of finance and tech, and thinks of AI as a marathon – not a sprint. “If you are lagging behind, maybe you have to run and catch up. But it’s more like a marathon. It’s a long-term and strategic initiative.”
He echoed Stubna about the human component.
“We completely believe – and truly it’s a part of what we teach here: human plus AI is a better outcome,” said Pippadipally. He added that Wiss is using AI in a variety of ways. Examples include horizontal/general purpose use cases, like as a smart assistant of sorts, to vertical use cases for clients and in the workflow — including custom solutions. “Always think with AI but use your professional judgment.
We completely believe – and truly it’s a part of what we teach here: human plus AI is a better outcome.
– Hrishikesh Pippadipally, CIO, Wiss
“We kind of use AI – pretty much everywhere, wherever we can.”
“We certainly, I think, are leveraging these tools,” said Levy. Additionally, “We provide legal services, as you said, and these platforms are decent – and getting better at a lot of the work that, historically, law firms have provided.”
“Just to back up a step for a second. I think if you had asked me two or three years ago, I would have been more concerned with the risks (particularly as GC) of utilizing these things, particularly on the confidentiality side, than I am now.
Replay: AI Panel Discussion
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“Now I’m concerned with the risks of not using them,” Levy continued. “Put aside competing out there in the market. We have ethical obligations to our clients to do the job that they’ve hired us to do; to charge them reasonable fees. And if I can now do something in five minutes that would have taken me 50 hours otherwise to do – and I have the tools in my fingertips, then I have an obligation – arguably an ethical one – to utilize these things.”
Kanige then threw it to Mazzanti. He asked about that last fact that Levy mentioned – the ethical obligation to use certain AI tools – and whether not using them puts a company behind the eight-ball.
“We’re the implementers in the group. So, if you look at the entire piece – beyond the fact that we would use the tools ourselves in-house – we deploy for our customers,” said Mazzanti. “So, I agree with the comment that you have an ethical obligation to deploy and use your tools in the marketplace.
“We’re going to see people vote with their dollars. If they think that they can get the same type of services from someone else at a lower cost, they’re going to move.”
“We have ethical obligations to our clients to do the job that they’ve hired us to do; to charge them reasonable fees. And if I can now do something in five minutes that would have taken me 50 hours otherwise to do – and I have the tools in my fingertips, then I have an obligation – arguably an ethical one – to utilize these things,” said panelist Joshua Levy of Gibbons PC. – DEPOSIT PHOTOS
‘Technology is anti-inflation’
Mazzanti noted there is a marketplace gap in how to focus time and attention, pointing to a solution his firm offers.
“We have one that’s called the 5050 plan. We use our depth of bench of consultants and engineers to go out to our customers and we find savings for them. Savings in human time; savings in financial means in deploying some technology,” Mazzanti explained. “I believe in my heart that technology is anti-inflation. If you’ve got inflation that’s eating at your business, we can deploy technology and help you find some way to combat that.”
Big investments
“And Oya, I’ve heard you speak about the kinds of things of things that NJIT does with AI and incorporating it into the curriculum. You’re going to be training a lot of the people who are going to go out and do the kind of work that your fellow panelists are talking about,” said Kanige. “Tell us a little bit about how that’s going at NJIT; how the students are picking it up. What they’re using it for?”
Tukel highlighted the role higher education plays in the introduction of all these technologies. She pointed to how the concepts of AI and large language models are familiar, but the tools are new.
“We are trying to make sure that the students have a better understanding of what’s an AI tool. What are the capabilities of AI? And how this can be used in different settings – in health care, in legal systems,” said panelist Oya Tukel, dean of the Martin Tuchman School of Management, NJIT. – DEPOSIT PHOTOS
“We are trying to make sure that the students have a better understanding of what’s an AI tool. What are the capabilities of AI? And how this can be used in different settings – in health care, in legal systems,” she explained. “NJIT invested $10 million already in terms of integrating AI to our curriculum. We have a lot of funds allocated for using AI as a teaching tool.
“How can we get the benefit of this kind of a generative tool that can help students better search information? Be able to get extra examples, case studies, simulations; and how are we going to be able to keep up with? Because in four years, we don’t even know where this technology is going to be.”
The 90-minute panel continued through a range of AI-related topics, including formulating an AI strategy for businesses; workforce issues; risks; limits; regulatory/cybersecurity/private concerns; and more.
Stay tuned for further coverage in the Aug. 4 issue of NJBIZ.
