He saw that storing data on the cloud, or Internet-connected remote servers, was becoming more and more popular. There was also a growing trend toward analytics, the idea better organizing data by using the power of cloud computing. So he figured the time was right to start teaching future business executives about the latest ways this technology could be harnessed.
"I am a technical optimist," said Schwarz, a professor in the Stephenson Department of Entrepreneurship & Information Systems. "I see opportunities everywhere."
But Schwarz said he didn't forecast the rapid rise of generative AI, where computers actually started producing new text, images and videos based on information they were trained on.
"The concept of AI has been around forever, but what we really saw in the last 18 months, a huge opportunity has evolved," he said.
Schwarz said he wants to see Louisiana and local businesses take advantage of that opportunity. Already, AI has started to make inroads in the state, thanks to the massive data center Meta plans to build in Richland Parish and the $2 billion data center Hut 8 has planned for West Feliciana Parish.
In this week's Talking Business, Schwarz talks about what steps Louisiana needs to take to play a role in the development of AI and how local businesses are using the technology.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
How is AI growing in Louisiana?
In Louisiana, we had a great year. The Meta data center was a huge deal, obviously one of the biggest economic development deals of the year nationwide. So that's going to have a pretty profound impact on us locally. So we're going to see 1,500 jobs on construction and then 500 direct jobs afterwards. So I'm expecting that to really open up some discussions around data centers and data center management. And then you had Hut 8 decide to come in with their data center as well.
Usually data centers are a pretty big economic driver. You're going to have these data center engineers. What happens a lot of times in these cases is the engineers move on to data center management. And when they do that, then they begin to maybe create new companies that are around AI. And then we also see, because of the nature of the data center, you're going to have servers and switches and routers and all this technology to keep up. So a lot of times what happens with data centers is the big companies like Cisco will come with the data centers, so they can prop it up and keep it moving.
What are some of the interesting ways local companies are using AI?
We have a venture challenge at LSU and the team that won this year was called FarmSmart. They're looking at AI and agriculture, trying to make our farmers better in terms of their yield.
The students interview farmers and they ask farmers, where do you get information on what seeds to plant or how to handle harvesting? So they used AI to create best practices.
From a health care perspective, we saw, we had an LSU startup DeepDrug. They partner with Skymount Medical; they've discovered more combinations of drugs using their platform than we have seen in the history of research before. It is spawning opportunities for researchers.
It looks like it's being used across the board, just a bunch of different industries.
It absolutely is. And that's so exciting. If you go to (lumber company) Roy O. Martin up in Alexandria, they're even experimenting with AI around about forestry and forestation. What trees should they cut down? When should they cut them down? How should that work?
There was an oil and gas company that was looking at pumps. And what they would do is, when a pump would break, they would send a technician out and the technician would come back and write a work order down. So they have 40 years of work orders they had created and they wanted to analyze.
Well, if you take an analytics approach, you have to take all those reports in, you have to code them, you have to designate the different reasons and hand code every single work order. The company took it into gen AI and actually analyzed all those work orders to give a list of how and why the pumps were breaking. They were able to not only pinpoint why their pumps were breaking, but based on all that data, predict when their current pumps were going to break, how they were going to break.
Are there any areas that Louisiana is maybe lagging behind in?
Education. One of my big concerns is just that this is going to require a big investment in education. And I don't just mean for traditional education, I mean adult education as well as traditional education systems because there's a natural inclination to look at AI and get scared and get worried.
The concern is, well, are they going to automate my job away? I understand that perspective. But what the evidence tends to show is that for every job that is being lost to AI, that same individual is being repurposed to a different type of job and upskilled.
When I talk to companies today, they're thinking about how do I actually take employees and add value to them using AI rather than replacing them. I think that's an important distinction.
What steps should the state take to help AI flourish?
I would love to see the state be very progressive around education and business development and creating an ecosystem that allows AI to really flourish.
I want the other 49 states to look at Louisiana and ask what's going on down the bayou, but let it be good so that we become the model for how we integrate all this together. I would love to see the private sector, the public sector, government, nonprofit, us all really work together to figure out a road map of what it means as a state from an economic and education perspective to advance this.
Because as much as I'm optimistic, there's a part of me that worries about the digital divide, particularly in our state, between those students who have access to AI and those that don't.
So, for the state to worry about access and leave the regulations on a federal level?
One hundred percent and really start to think about how we create an advantage that other states can't replicate.
What are some of the trends you see coming in 2025 and down the line in terms of AI locally?
I think what we're going to start to see is businesses really start to think about how they're going to implement this, not only from an operational perspective, but a strategic perspective.
Most businesses locally at this point are interested in AI. They're doing pilots around AI and which is really a slow and cautious approach, which I think is the right thing to do. I think what we're going to start to see locally is that companies are going to start to yield benefits and then when they start to gain those benefits, they're going to start to view AI not only operationally but strategically to see how we could potentially change markets.
I think we're going to start to see the educational systems step up and start to offer opportunities around AI education. I've been to almost a majority of the institutions across the state of higher ed at least. And we're all thinking that way in terms of, "How do we prepare these students for the next generation?" At LSU alone, we have over a 100 classes right now that have some component of AI in them.
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