By Angelina Perez, Asst. Features Editor & Web Editor
Head of Bloomberg’s User Experience Join as Panelists Regarding AI’s Use in Workspace
Enrico Forti is an associate professor of strategy here at Manhattan College who, in communications with the O’Malley School of Business, brought two panelists from the software company Bloomberg to speak to students and faculty about artificial intelligence (AI) and the workplace space.
Panelist Ash Brown is the current head of user experience at Bloomberg, where her journey in the company evolved from interaction designer to trading systems. Now, she is leading a global team focused on user experience. Christian Hiemstra is the global head of design and workplace strategy and joined Forti and Brown, breaking down user experience design and how to use the tools you have to deliver valuable and successful products.
The panel followed Forti, bouncing off questions for Brown and Hiemstra regarding the history of AI development, the first time they discovered AI and what that meant for future hires. Students asked questions regarding AI at the end, hoping to gain knowledge from the pair.
Sophomore Sean Li was the first to raise his hand and volunteer to converse with the panelists, who then informed him how much they enjoyed the depth and thought that went into what he asked.
“I’ve gone to a couple of events like this and I find the implications and also the ethical concerns of artificial intelligence to be very interesting,” said Li. “It’s definitely something that’s very significant in this modern day. We use it on a regular basis, even if you don’t recognize it. ChatGPT is the most obvious form of artificial intelligence, but even using Google Maps to find your way someplace that you don’t know or tracking train times on the MTA app is a different form of artificial intelligence.”
Li informed The Quadrangle about the development of AI and the different phases it has taken in the last few years. He encourages those entering the workforce soon to familiarize themselves with artificial intelligence by the time it reaches different job markets.
“As time continues on, AI will become more and more complex,” Li said. “And with that, there’s more power and responsibility to fully understand what we’re dealing with so that we can mitigate it properly and not abuse it in any formal way.”
Seniors Grace Buckley and Chris Balmaceda attended this panel to better understand the workforce and how it has adapted AI to use for their cis and business analytics majors.
“With what I’m going to do, there’s a lot of AI, and I even worked at Salesforce over the summer, and they were introducing their Einstein AI,” Balmaceda said. “So, I just thought coming to this panel would be interesting. I’m also taking an AI class right now.”
AI has shocked multiple generations, helping students with education aspects separate from just writing essays, with professors and institutions banning programs such as ChatGPT from entering their classrooms.
“When Ash Brown spoke about how [millennials] thought email would be a significant change and then it didn’t, it made me wonder if all this AI hysteria is overhyped, and that’s something to think about,” Buckley said.
Buckley discovered AI software from a classmate, and she believes it can help anyone with an upcoming interview. It’s a free platform called InterviewGPT.
“There’s also things regarding AI that I hadn’t heard about,” Buckley said. “In one of my classes, this girl talked about this website that uses AI to access your interviews, analyze it and recommend suggestions like your lighting or your body language. You can even upload your own videos.”
Buckley and Balmaceda continued to address the growth of artificial intelligence and its prices varying from free software to those raising up to the thousands of dollars, hoping eventually it will be easily accessible to the public with more advancements to follow.
“AI can be utilized in different ways that people don’t even realize,” Balmaceda said. “It could help education majors teach to their students in a way that helps students grasp a little bit at a time no matter what age they’re teaching or an engineer, but it can apply to really all majors just because of how versatile and willing it is.”
Forti closed the panel, hoping Hiemstra and Brown would come to be panelists for another talk for students at MC to familiarize themselves with the technological growth of our world.