- Utah's AI Leadership Blueprint guides businesses in adopting AI responsibly and effectively.
- Developed by industry leaders and academics, it addresses leadership policy training and literacy.
- Experts stress AI's inevitability, urging workers to learn and adapt to avoid displacement.
SALT LAKE CITY — As Utah companies and workers seek to understand and integrate artificial intelligence into their workflows, a group of industry executives and academics is hoping a blueprint can guide everyone toward a brighter, AI-integrated future.
Developed in partnership with the University of Utah One-U Responsible AI Initiative at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, the "AI Leadership Blueprint" aims to give the state's businesses and employees a guide on how to responsibly adopt AI while addressing topics like leadership, internal policy, training and literacy.
"I do feel like it's something leaders are going to be able to grab onto, whether they're using a policy template from it or an educational template from it," said Kevin Williams, CEO of Ascend AI Labs and a contributor to the blueprint. "It's going to give them a little bit of an edge in a sea of noise and also a place where nobody is trying to sell them anything. This is truly a public good-type document."
The blueprint was rolled out in early September during a symposium at the U.
Williams and others in the group acknowledged during a recent interview with KSL-TV that the current workplace landscape is complicated and that many companies and workers are already behind the curve.
"The speed of change here is impossible to underrate," Williams said. "We've never seen anything like this."
The speed of change here is impossible to underrate. We've never seen anything like this.
–Kevin Williams, Ascend AI Labs
Robin Huling, president and CEO of Warner Communication, said that to be well-positioned, companies should be incorporating AI and establishing AI policies now.
"We used to talk about if you don't have AI as part of your 5-year strategic planning, you would be left behind," Huling said. "Now it's a year."
Williams predicted a particularly difficult time in the next couple of years, where workers in a variety of fields would face potential displacement due to artificial intelligence.
"Coding, for example, is sort of 'ground zero' right now for displacement, but coding into customer service, into marketing support, into other verticals," Williams explained. "We're going to see a lot of impacts."
Penny Atkins, director of research and science at the University of Utah's SCI Institute, said workers simply can't ignore AI as an emerging technology.
"The worst thing you can do is be uneducated or avoidant of AI," Atkins said. "I think it's everywhere and if you don't understand it or if you don't think about the various considerations when you're using AI, that's the best way to get left behind."
This is not something that we're going to be able to hide from, no matter really who you are.
–Kevin Williams, Ascend AI Labs
Instead, Williams, Huling and Atkins suggested workers do their best to learn and embrace AI.
"I think you can take your ideas to newer levels," Atkins said. "You can have help with things like marketing or coding."
The experts said people will always have a spot in the workplace, even with the presence of artificial intelligence and especially in roles where the human touch matters.
"This is not something that we're going to be able to hide from, no matter really who you are," Williams said. "Leaning into it and trying to prognosticate on what the future of Utah looks like as far as its workforce is really an exciting challenge."
