PITTSBURGH (PTTP)- On March 3, the University of Pittsburgh’s Career Center held an event called “AI and Automation: Embrace or Replace? Lunch and Learn,” targeted towards AI use and career readiness.
The event was attended by around 20 students and was held in room 224 of the Career Center in the William Pitt Union. Free lunch from Moes was provided for the attendees.
Taught by Tim McLaughlin, COO and Founder of Blink Advertising, the event showed attendees how companies are using AI, how workloads are changing, and how AI can be used as a “translator” between different roles.
“[You can] take your thoughts and communicate it in a way that [a coworker in a different field is] going to embrace it and says, ‘Oh, okay, I understand,’ and vice versa,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin discussed AI’s potential to act as an assistant and complete “admin” tasks that take away time from the employee’s overall process. He used the example of a project pre-AI taking three weeks in total: the first two weeks were spent on administrative tasks, and the last week consisting of deep thought and creative work. With AI, McLaughlin says the process can be reversed with one week of administrative time and two weeks of deeper processing.
“What’s the happy medium? Well, that’s what we’re all still trying to figure out,” McLaughlin said.
The presentation focused on using AI as a tool, not a fix-all employee. McLaughlin acknowledged that employees should review the work that comes out of AI and not lose their authenticity in the process. To keep authenticity while using AI in his organization, McLaughlin utilizes Gemini and the “gems” feature.
“Authenticity is the only thing that won’t be commodified,” McLaughlin said.