Artificial intelligence helps doctors detect deadly infections and respond quicker in saving lives. AI-powered tools provide banking services to those with none in developing countries, helping local artisans sell their crafts and support their families. And in international shipping, AI programs optimize supply chains and help tankers avoid weather delays, moving goods more efficiently and reducing carbon emissions.
But AI also allows hackers to attack and leave little trace and the technology can help fraudsters create deep fake videos that once tricked an unsuspecting employee in a finance department to wire millions of dollars into a bank account that vanished before the fraud was detected. And when it comes to warfare, cyberattacks are being used to “soften” countries for a real-world invasion.
Global businesses are excited about the AI-fueled future. But it’s complicated.
That was the quandary that took centerstage at the 2nd Annual USF International Business Forum on March 13 as some of the leading thinkers in technology, trade and key industries gathered with an audience of more than 250 to contemplate the many ways artificial intelligence will shape the future.
Gayle Sheppard — who graduated from USF in 2000 with a business degree and went on to shape digital innovation strategies for industry leaders like Microsoft, Intel and PeopleSoft — presented the day’s keynote speech and led an hour-long panel discussion with leaders from global trade, finance, healthcare, cybersecurity and national defense. While AI inevitably will touch nearly every facet of life and work in the future, understanding how to best navigate that profound change is a process that’s just now beginning.
“AI is not just a risk, right?” Sheppard said. “It’s a powerful game changer for economic growth, a powerful game changer for sustainability, and certainly for society.”
“AI is not just a risk, right?” Sheppard said. “It’s a powerful game changer for economic growth, a powerful game changer for sustainability, and certainly for society.”
The event came just days after USF announced a record-setting $40 million gift to establish the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing. This transformational investment — the largest in USF’s nearly 70-year history — marks the first named college in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to the convergence of AI and cybersecurity. USF President Rhea Law said the college, which launches latter this year, is designed to bring rigorous research not just to the underlying technology of AI but to address the many ways it will be used and potentially misused, all while preparing USF students to be successful in using the new technology.
“As AI continues to evolve, the demand for skilled professionals will continue to grow, along with the need for more research to better understand how to utilize powerful new technologies in ways that improve our society,” President Law said. “Our new Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing will boost disciplines across USF — including in health, engineering, and the arts and humanities — while producing a new type of 21st-century graduate who can leverage artificial intelligence to enhance their work.”
Sheppard, an expert on artificial intelligence whose career has focused on bringing operational and decision sciences software solutions to the world’s top companies, described for conference attendees the myriad ways that AI is shaping nearly every industry, from farming to finance. AI powered drones and sensors are used by farmers in the Midwest to scan soil health to optimize crop yields while banks are turning to AI “agents” to deal with the volume of customer help line calls that don’t require human attention. In the future, bank customers can tell their own agentic AI bots to call the bank and handle minor problems without a person ever getting involved.
But she also warned that AI in the wrong hands now presents unprecedented cybersecurity risks as AI allows hackers to exploit systems with speed and stealth not sen before. Cybersecurity has gone from being a reaction to a hacking event to a field where experts are trying to predict and thwart attacks before they happen.
“AI is a double -edged sword,” she said. “It can be a force multiplier for productivity and growth. But it also demands very deliberate, focused oversight for how we scale up and transition our workforce and create literacy in our communities.”
Voices from the Forum
Raul Alfonso is the executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Port of Tampa Bay. The port is Florida’s largest when it comes to tonnage handled and geographic footprint, and as the state’s population has grown in recent decades the demands on the supply chain that flow through the port also grow, Alfonso said. Port of Tampa Bay produces a $34 .6 billion annual impact and serves 40 percent of Florida’s population with everything from food to steel to airplane fuel.
“We are a crucial hub for the supply chain that affects our lives, so imagine how effective efficient improvement can help this supply chain on our daily lives,” Alfonso said.
“For us, there is a huge opportunity for collaboration. It needs to be because there is a learning process, and there are a lot of factors. We can improve on our functions, on our daily organization.”
AI Saves Lives
Nishit Patel is a vice president and chief informatics officer at Tampa General Hospital. A graduate of the Morsani College of Medicine, Patel started his medical career as a dermatologist who embraced technology to improve his patients’ outcomes. He’s since become a leader in incorporating AI technology into other areas of patient care with early and impressive results for the community.
“Eighty percent of our health system in the country haven’t even deployed a single generative AI application in the clinical world,” Patel said. “We are in the top 7% of the country in terms of number of gen AI apps that we have live today. And it's not just because it's shiny and exciting, it's because in healthcare, we've had some really large challenges that are not going to be solved with traditional solutions.
“In fact, 30% of all data generated in the world now is healthcare data, so more than all the TikToks and Netflix shows and all those things. And the challenge is for us, about 75% of all healthcare data are unstructured. There's all this valuable information, these key insights, things that can really help us make care more efficient, safer, drive costs down and really create efficiencies that we've never been able to tap into.”
“Eighty percent of our health system in the country haven’t even deployed a single generative AI application in the clinical world,” Patel said.
One vivid example Patel shared is how TGH providers have used AI-powered technology to reduce cases of sepsis, which nationwide occurs in about 15% of hospitalized patients and kills hundreds of thousands of people each year. “If you go into the hospital sick, you come out healthy and back to your family. That's our job, right? And when someone doesn't leave the hospital, something went wrong,” he said. “If we can detect (sepsis) in a matter of hours and get the right treatments, people survive. Nationally, it’s about an 18% death rate if you have sepsis in the hospital.”
But TGH is using technology to detect sepsis sooner, order treatments and then track to make sure patients are getting those treatments in a timely manner. “Because of that work, we are under a 7% mortality rate as a result of these tools. And what that really translates to is there are 400 of our patients in our community who went back to their families who wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for these tools.”
Transforming Finance and Keeping Banks Safe
Stuart Feld, chief AI officer at Raymond James, said the St. Petersburg-headquartered investment bank and financial services firm uses AI to help employees be more efficient in the heavily-regulated industry. AI also is important for hardening the banking systems from cyberattacks, he said. The worldwide bank has more than 10,000 employees and holds more than $1.45 trillion in client assets. Unsurprisingly, it’s a frequent target of cyber criminals.
“If anybody wants to guess … over 1 billion attacks come to our platform that we work with every year,” Feld said. “The scale is amazing.”
AI and the City
“Here in the city, we use AI from everything from our traffic control to our trash pickup, but there are so many other ways we will be able to use that and it is the future,” said Tampa Mayor Jane Castor.
“No matter what ways we use AI, I believe in my heart it will always come back to those relationships that we build and the importance of those relationships.”
AI on the World Stage
Consul General of Brazil in Florida, João Lucas Quental Novaes de Almeida, said AI will have a huge impact on trade and diplomacy, but won’t replace the uniquely human skills and person-to-person trust needed in international business. “I think at the last mile you still need the human, the diplomat, or the trained negotiator,” he said. “If you are an explorer, of course you can rely on AI to elaborate your market analysis, but you may also need to visit that particular market, talk to (and) assess specific needs of that area that you are prospecting. What I heard somebody say here before, it won't be replaced by AI, but you will need to be able to use AI as a tool to enhance your effectiveness, to be able to exploit your own advantages.”
USF World Advisory Council member Karl Kaliebe, executive director of World Trade Center Tampa Bay, agreed that AI doesn’t replace humans in crucial international exchanges. “We're building large language models. That's our language, not their language,” Kaliebe said. “If you look at paradigms and the way language creates culture and creates thought process, sometimes that's where we get into discrepancies. I would always agree to go and meet people face to face, engage with them, and don't rely on the model.”
It's a very powerful tool, and it can augment our ability to do things faster, more effectively, see things that we've never been able to see before,” said Ernest Ferraresso, senior director of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity at USF. “But, and here comes the movie quote, to quote one of our greatest Americans, I think they said, ‘With great power comes great responsibility. That was Peter Parker's uncle from Spiderman … meaning, you've got to understand what it is we have. Understand that it's not going to replace people and that you've got to know the security and how it's being used. If you're going to put all this trust in it, please make sure that you're verifying that trust is placed in the right spot.”
AI Also Keeps Them Up at Night
Hugh Campbell is president of AC42, a Tampa-based company that provides software, cybersecurity, cloud services and other digital solutions for small and medium businesses. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Campbell served 16 years in the Army as a communications officer.
“The thing that keeps me up at night is these hacker toolkits. They’re out there on the dark web … but now these toolkits are going to be powered by AI,” he said.
“In the cyber security world, we do this thing called “attribution” — who did what, when, and all those things — we look at the logs to see what happened. If the models get so good (in) these tool kits, they’ll cover their tracks so well … I think they have advantage once they break in.”
A College Built Around AI
As a Distinguished University Professor in the College of Engineering, Sudeep Sarkar has used machine learning to push the boundaries of innovation. Now as the launch dean for the new Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing, he’s at the forefront of what will become a first-of-its kind research, innovation and training ground for a new generation of AI experts. USF’s history with AI goes back further than most people know, he said.
“In 1986 at USF, the first AI lab was formed,” Sarkar said. “In 2005, we had our first security computer security student group … cybersecurity was not even a term and the students were competing at national level. Fast forward now we are at a point where we are at the convergence of AI and cybersecurity. And in this region, we are taking the lead.
“The way to look at AI is not as a competitor, but it's a tool that we can use to unleash the human protection. So, it's really (about) the way we use AI. Is it helping us be more creative? More productive? … As technology developers, we have to develop these tools with that in mind so that somebody can responsibly use them.”
The Bottom Line: AI is Here to Stay
As a serial innovator with distinguished record of leading new technology firms, Darren Schumacher of USF’s Institute for Applied Engineering, which brings new technologies to cybersecurity and national defense projects for the U.S. government and industry, is accustomed to working on the leading edge of evolving technologies. Prior to joining USF, Schumacher was the director of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications at a University of Michigan spinoff.
“Embrace it understand it, use it, try it, because that's how you're going to become literate in a way that's incredibly useful to the organization,” he said.
“I think at the last mile you still need the human, the diplomat, or the trained negotiator,” he said. “If you are an explorer, of course you can rely on AI to elaborate your market analysis, but you may also need to visit that particular market, talk to, assess specific needs of that area that you are prospecting. What I heard somebody say here before, you won't be replaced by AI, but you will need to be able to use AI as a tool to enhance your effectiveness, to be able to exploit your own advantages.”
To help people harness the power of this rapidly advancing technology, University of South Florida’s Innovative Education has created GenAI in Action: Impact and Possibilities, a free, self-paced online micro-course open to everyone.