Cleveland.com: Artificial intelligence will soon affect everything we do, and it ‘will only get better’

Panelists from Cleveland's health care industry participated in a forum on AI hosted by OhioX, a nonprofit trade association that aims to connect, promote, and advocate for technology in Ohio.

By: Gretchen Cuda Kroen, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio—ChatGPT, the trendy AI software that writes for you, is only the beginning. That was the consensus of a panel of experts who spoke Wednesday at a forum on artificial intelligence at John Carrol University.

“AI will affect everyone who thinks or creates for a living,” Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, told a packed auditorium. “It won’t replace them but it will affect everything they do.”

The forum was hosted by OhioX, a nonprofit trade association that aims to connect, promote, and advocate for technology in Ohio.

The panelists included experts from industry and health care who spoke about the way AI is already being used and will be used increasingly in the future.

As an example, Roetzer demonstrated Copilot, a new AI addition to the Microsoft 365 suite of software that is in beta testing. The software will integrate information from a user’s documents and emails in order to generate meeting notes, prepare presentations, draft emails, and analyze spreadsheet data. Microsoft announced Wednesday that it would price the product at $30 per user, per month.

“This is the least effective form of AI you will ever see,” said Roetzer. “Because it will only get better.”

Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, spoke about the importance of embracing AI and utilizing the technology to improve education, and government efficiency.

“How do we make government work better? How do we improve customer service? How do we save tax dollars? All of these things technology has allowed us to do over time, this is just the latest new entrant into the technology game,” said Husted.

One entire panel was devoted to how AI is impacting the healthcare industry. Dr. Leo Bittencourt, a radiologist at University Hospitals, said that intelligent image-detection algorithms are already being used to aid clinicians in the detection of strokes, blood clots in the lungs, and fractures. And hospitals are also learning to use AI in non-clinical ways to do things such as generate more efficient staffing schedules.

“The world changed in the past year,” said Rohit Chandra, data science officer for the Cleveland Clinic. Classical AI is about finding patterns in data and making predictions and has been in place for over a decade, he explained. What really changed things was the emergence of generative AI, because it actually synthesizes new information from a variety of patterns. “It’s getting easier to use,” said Chandra. “Seismic shifts in every industry are going to happen.”

And while AI is certainly going to continue to improve patient care, Chandra said the benefit really goes beyond that to things like freeing up physicians from paperwork that costs them time and healthcare systems money.

“Trying to navigate to a future where we can leverage technology effectively to do healthcare cheaper, better and faster I think is an imperative, not just in Cleveland but for the industry at large,” he said.

As for those who are concerned about becoming obsolete as a result of the emerging technology, the experts agree that there’s “an explosion of new problems to solve,” and people are needed to fine tune the algorithms and understand how and when to use them effectively.

For example, AI algorithms are still prone to fabricating quotes and information and have been known to inadvertently introduce errors or biases based on the input.

Instead of eliminating jobs, it will create new kinds of jobs, said Husted. In addition, Ohio is expected to have fewer people of working age every year for the foreseeable future, and AI is going to be a way we fill those gaps in the workforce, he said.

“This is not new. This is about helping people understand what’s here, what the uses will be, how we prepare young people, how we prepare governments,” said Husted. “I don’t know all the answers, and I don’t think anyone here today knows all the answers. But we want to start having those conversations and having those collaborations take place so Ohio as a state and our local governments and our educators are on the leading edge of this and not a laggard.”

OhioX will hold a second panel discussion on AI in Cincinnati Aug. 1.

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