AI Roundtable: 12 Takeaways, Opportunities, Dangers

A recent Channel Futures Leadership Summit artificial intelligence (AI) roundtable addressed the benefits and dangers of the technological advancement.

Among the key points was AI is a tool, not an easy button, so humans will always need to be in the loop.

Panelists addressed the good of AI, such as how organizations can increase efficiency, and the bad, such as malicious hackers making use of it to craft and launch more effective cyberattacks.

Roundtable participants included:

We asked participants when it comes to AI, what’s not being talked about enough.

“What's that one thing that I can do today to monetize and help my customers?” Gadda said.

Haralson said it’s that one piece in the software that “unlocks a whole new beast” in an AI stack.

“I think it's just the one thing that we may not know or have thought about how we're going to connect it, but when it does, it changes the game,” he said.

Bergamo said while AI can do “all sorts of great things,” humans need to always be involved.

“They need to understand what the customers are thinking, feeling and doing … and don't let a chatbot do that for you,” she said. “Also, we are at the very baseline of capabilities with AI. Don't use AI to emulate the old ways of solving problems. Look at AI as ways to open up new opportunities, new revenue streams and tackle new challenges. Don't use an AI tool like you would a Google to do research. There's so much more that these tools can do.”

Rajagopal said AI is going to be utilized a lot in robotics.

“We're seeing that happening side by side,” he said. “We're going to have all these AI-powered robots all over the place.”

Scroll through our slideshow above for more comments from the AI roundtable.