Evers' task force meets in Milwaukee to talk artificial intelligence and its impact on the Wisconsin workforce

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Last week, OpenAI's ChatGPT celebrated its one-year anniversary of being a premier leader in the artificial intelligence space.

The language-based chat program has created a lot of buzz about what could be next for the world we live in; it's also been the source of heavy criticism.

Monday, Dec. 4, state leaders with Gov. Tony Evers' task force on Workforce and Artificial Intelligence met at Milwaukee Area Technical College to talk about the Wisconsin job market and the new role AI could potentially play in it.

"Right now, we are really looking at the AI component impacting virtually every single job in the entire world," said Secretary Amy Pechacek with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.

Pechacek sits on the task force as a chairperson.

The secretary went on to say AI could add value to the Wisconsin job market amid a growing need for workers.

"We are really looking at AI as the way to keep our economy moving forward, to fill some of those workforce gaps and to augment and really advance the type of work people are doing," said Pechacek.

Artificial intelligence is not new technology, it's been around for more than 70 years, but Pechacek said the birth of ChatGPT evolved the technology to new heights.

"It's got machine learning, it's able to do lots of data analysis and big data set, and it's more accessible now than ever before."

"It's so new it's almost impossible to predict what its impact is going to be," said David Williamson Shaffer, a professor of learning analytics at UW-Madison.

Shaffer said AI has the potential to change the workload of employees.

"It's probably not directly replacing jobs -- what it changes is the kind of work people do."

The professor went on to say AI could become fundamental for the workplace.

"People are not going to be replaced by AI, people are going to be replaced by people using AI."

The meeting at MATC marks the task force's second time meeting. They plan on meeting again virtually sometime in January.