By Olivia McMurrey
At Yo’ Mama’s restaurant in downtown Birmingham, Rosie and Jeffrey make their co-workers’ lives easier.
On a recent Thursday, Jeffrey rolled through the dining area carrying trays of food, stopping and politely saying “excuse me” when a couple of customers needed to adjust their chairs so he could pass.
“So Jeffrey is really smart, and he does the hard part of remembering, and we just type in a number according to the layout inside the restaurant,” said Khaia Wheeler as she pointed to a keypad and explained how to direct Jeffrey, a robot about three and a half feet tall with four shelves for transporting up to 80 pounds of food and drinks to customers’ tables.
Jeffrey’s counterpart, Rosie, works in the kitchen, moving to-go orders from prep stations to the front counter.
AI in Alabama isn’t the future – it’s now
Robots like Jeffrey and Rosie are just one example of how artificial intelligence is already transforming workplaces in Alabama. And the pace of the AI revolution is about to accelerate.
James Locke, executive director of Troy University’s new Center for Artificial Intelligence Research and Education, said that soon, AI use in various industries will be similar to electricity consumption.
“Some will use it a lot,” he said. “Some will use it a little, but everyone will be using it.”
While AI presents organizations with vast opportunities for innovation, envisioning the possibilities is a challenge for many, he said. And once that’s done, employers must train employees to interact with AI in ways that will achieve goals. One aim of the Center for AI Research and Education is to help businesses, nonprofits and governments successfully implement AI technologies.
Effects on jobs
Doing that doesn’t necessarily mean workplaces will require fewer employees, though.
“If you have, say, 100 people in your group, and you teach all 100 how to use a lever, and then the other group over there has 100 people, and they kick out 90 of them and say, ‘Well, gosh, we can move the same stuff with only 10 people using the lever.’ The group where everybody uses the lever is going to be way better off, and it’s the same kind of analogy,” Locke said.
This is the case at Yo’ Mama’s restaurant. Wheeler said she made a few jokes about robots coming for her job when the eatery first started using them in February, but working with Jeffrey and Rosie has made her feel like she can do her job better.
Employee Samone Powell agreed.
“It’s allowing us to be able to carry all the plates for all the orders at once, instead of having to run back and forth to the windows,” she said.
Crystal Peterson, who co-owns the restaurant with her mother, said one robot can equal two people moving food, and a robot costs only $20 a day. But they haven’t reduced the number of people they employ.
“It’s just something that assists the humans, not something to replace them,” Peterson said.
The robots are a huge help when staff miss work, she said, and they make staff more efficient while decreasing the job’s physical demands. Workers take fewer steps and don’t have to carry multiple plates.
Locke acknowledged some organizations will shrink staff and some jobs will become obsolete, especially in knowledge work, but said other employers will grow, tasks will change, and new jobs will be created.
For example, Locke said large law firms typically pay recent graduates $80,000 to $90,000 to do research.
“Why would a law firm pay for that when you can go buy a $20,000 computer, and the computer does all the research, and it does it 24/7, 365?” he asked. “So what are the people coming out of law school going to do? Well, if the firm is smart, they start getting everybody engaged in, ‘Let’s serve clients better.’”
Re-skilling in healthcare professions
In the healthcare industry, a top employer in Alabama, AI is already improving administrative capabilities, reducing costs, and aiding in diagnosing and treating cancer and rare diseases, said Dr. Rubin Pillay, chief innovation officer of the UAB Health System.
“Inside five years, we can expect substantial improvement in the quality of AI that’s used in medicine,” he said. “We’re already finding the improvements in the outputs more than doubling every year. It’s going to really result in a redefinition of everything in healthcare.”
Perhaps the most promising possibility surrounding AI in healthcare in Alabama is the potential it has to prop up rural hospitals, preventing more people from having to travel hours to receive treatment. About 70% of community hospitals in the state are in danger of being shut down, Pillay said, and a reduction in specialty services is largely to blame.
“The real opportunity here is to start getting AI to be embraced at these hospitals that are at risk, so they can start delivering specialty-level care across all domains,” he said.
And that will mean a lot of changes in the healthcare workforce. Pillay said lower-level healthcare providers, such as nurses, can be “twinned” with AI to provide specialty care. That will require re-skilling – something he says will be necessary for all healthcare professionals.
“When you couple a specialist with AI, there is an improvement, but when you couple a lower-level healthcare worker with AI, the improvement is significantly more,” he said.
AI will take on jobs involving mechanized, repetitive tasks – like answering phones through a call center, he said. And it will lead to new and hybrid roles, such as physician data scientists as well as ethicists and other professionals to ensure AI is used responsibly.
“Whenever we have an industrial revolution, it comes with a wave of new jobs,” Pillay said.
Manufacturing job possibilities and pitfalls
But in sectors such as manufacturing, blue-collar workers might not have as many chances to re-skill and find different jobs.
Will Tucker, Southern program director for Jobs to Move America, a policy center that advocates for workers, said automation and offshoring have already harmed manufacturing-industry employees as companies search for the cheapest labor route.
He said AI will deeply integrate into the already highly automated sector. If AI is focused on productivity above all else, he said it will not only eliminate jobs but could also exacerbate problems many of Alabama’s manufacturing workers already face in terms of long hours, unreasonable production quotas, schedules they can’t control, injury risks and stagnant wages.
He notes that safety and labor-rights violations are most common in rural facilities run by companies that supply better-known manufacturers. Those suppliers operate with far less scrutiny, he said.
“When you have these environments with really fast line speeds, workers who are working such long hours and then you add AI to the mix, you can imagine that AI starts influencing those line speeds,” he said. “You can imagine that AI starts influencing whether people get called in for a swing shift. That can be an alarming picture, but it doesn’t have to be.”
For instance, particularly unsafe jobs could be automated. AI could increase productivity while reducing workers’ hours and maintaining their pay and benefits.
Tucker says workers, communities and companies can come together to make this happen. And public officials should be listening to working-class voters.
“Policymakers, legislators should pay attention to this issue, and they shouldn’t get their understanding about these issues from the bosses,” he said.
Preparation and urgency
Pillay said AI can make Alabama industries more competitive globally, but preparation is needed.
“If we’re able to plan for this, it really is an opportunity and not a threat,” he said. “It’s a now opportunity. And we need to have in place the necessary systems, guard rails, etc., to capitalize on that. We need industry, academia and government to partner if we’re going to reap the benefits of this technology.”
Locke said education is key, and the state must act quickly.
“We have to understand that these technologies will not wait on us at all,” he said. “In Alabama, if we focused on education, and I mean K-12 education, we could be a real leader. It would transform where we are.”’
The new center Locke directs is developing a K-12 curriculum to help students understand and engage with AI.
What individuals can do
Locke said employers should train employees to use AI. But if they don’t, individuals who want to stay competitive in the workforce shouldn’t sit idly by.
“Given the speed of change now, which has shifted from linear change to exponential change, it is smart for employees to think about, ‘If my company is not interested in this, this is something I want to do on my own,’” he said. “And maybe you want to move to a different company that is going to be more engaged with it.”
Pillay said AI literacy should be a priority for all healthcare professionals.
He said UAB offers free basic AI literacy training to all employees as well as advanced certifications and degree programs focused on AI. The university also is infusing AI education into curricula across health professions through its Institute for Biomedical Innovation.
“One of the primary reasons that this institute that I run was set up is essentially to start the process of retooling folk,” said Pillay, who is executive director of the Institute for Biomedical Innovation.
The AI Research and Education Center Locke leads provides training for community members as well as businesses and students. But he said just interacting with generative AI and applying it to one’s work and personal life is a great way to learn.
“Have it write a poem to a loved one who’s in a nursing home,” he said. “If they like Shakespeare, ask the AI to do it in the voice of Shakespeare, and make their day.”
Locke said surprisingly few people are doing things like this. He said six people in an audience of about 400 state employees raised their hands in December when he asked who was using generative AI.
“People tend to look at this as cheating,” he said. “I’m being paid to do this job, and I don’t want to cheat. We use physical tools all the time to do entire projects for us. Same here. It’s an intellectual tool.”
Still, there’s good reason to proceed cautiously. AI makes mistakes. Locke advises treating it like a resource you’re skeptical of and asking it where it got its information.
He said one reward for developing AI skills is an escape from work tasks that aren’t fulfilling.
“You’re taking out a lot of the mundane and the boring and the assembling and the digging around to find things, and you’re letting the computer do that for you,” he said. “And it’s pushing you to a higher-order thinking.”
The result, he said, is that we’ll have more fun at work.