By Lorrie DeFrank
Jacksonville entrepreneur Ed Baldwin believes businesses that don’t use artificial intelligence somewhere in their operations within the next two years are going to be left behind.
He is among a handful of small business owners who are ahead of the curve after participating in JAX Chamber’s recent JAX Bridges AI Boot Camp. They are working faster, smarter and more efficiently by using an AI program that started in Jacksonville. Dr. Carlton Robinson, the Chamber’s Chief Innovation Officer, developed the program that he launched in June. It is designed to digitally provide answers to specific questions and problems more effectively than by using greater generative pre-trained transformer domains already available or by having humans do traditional research.
Robinson’s program provides consistent information regardless of the type of business. For instance, Baldwin and Calonda Henry, who also participated in the boot camp, have different business types and needs, yet both successfully use the program to ask about individual concerns and receive specific practical solutions instantly. Baldwin is CEO of ProfileGorilla that provides credentialing and vetting solutions on vendors and connects businesses and consumers to its network of pre-vetted service professionals for the insurance industry. Henry, a licensed speech pathologist, is the founder of Broad Horizons Speech Therapy. Both also are alumni of JAX Bridges, JAX Chamber’s entrepreneurial growth program for people who want to start, grow or improve a business.
Within a fraction of the time a person could research a solution to an inquiry, the program scans the 30 learning paths Robinson developed and comes up with a response that would always be consistent for that particular concern for any industry. The program, which is focused only on supporting entrepreneurs, rolled out last summer as JAX Bridges AI Boot Camp and for now is available only through the Chamber’s Venture Services. However, its users and others familiar with its potential foresee it going national, and even global, in the near future. Robinson and Anamaria Contreras, Executive Director, Jax Chamber Foundation, facilitated the boot camp.
For Baldwin’s company, the biggest concern was customer service. A small but growing business with about 50 employees worldwide, phone calls far exceed the number of people available to answer them, resulting in a frustrated customer base. “It was a massive win for us because the AI solution that we are implementing for customer service is available 24 hours a day. AI can answer the simple questions. Complex questions get escalated to our call team,” he said. “It’s a game changer for us. We would never have gotten there had it not been for the Chamber’s boot camp.”
For Henry, who provides speech and language therapy services to children and their parents, the main challenge was having enough team members and access to capital to be competitive. “We were leaving referrals behind because we only have people available to work between certain hours, but what happens after hours if someone needs to call in or if there is a response that requires me personally,” she said. “A lot of small business owners struggle with having to do everything. You keep up with companies that have dedicated marketing teams by staying ahead of the curve.” Because clerical positions don’t bring in revenue, entrepreneurs must carefully allocate available funds, she said. The AI program identified ways for existing team members to be more productive in less time. For example, a HIPAA-compliant AI program collects information during patient sessions, significantly cutting documentation time afterward.
“All of us who went through the boot camp are very busy small business executives,” agreed Baldwin. “Nobody on my staff is in charge of AI research. If we want to do something new, we have to personally invest the time to research and test it. And it’s really a struggle to know where to begin with new AI solutions coming out every day.” Overwhelmed by the choices, participants welcomed learning strategies to narrow down types of AI solutions to provide the biggest benefit. Robinson’s program targets the main problems entrepreneurs want to solve.
Contrary to what many people believe, Baldwin and Henry both stressed that AI does not take jobs away from employees.
“AI is not completely independent. It does need assistance in order to be understood and used effectively,” Henry said. “One of my biggest takeaways from the boot camp was Dr. Robinson saying that AI is not here to replace anyone but should be a tool that small business owners and entrepreneurs can use to upscale their employees.”
“There is a lot of fear that AI is going to take people’s jobs. Most small business owners would hire 15 new people if they could, but they can’t afford to, so they prioritize and make do,” Baldwin said. “Looking at my business, AI is not going to eliminate one person’s job. It is going to let me hire other people. Maybe not a customer service person, but an engineer or salesperson or operations person. AI gives leadership the ability to hire strategic roles.”
Henry said she enjoyed the boot camp, where she experienced wearing the Apple Vision Pro, a mixed-reality headset, and trying other AI technology. A millennial growing up in a technological world, she nevertheless was familiar only with OpenAI’s ChatGPT before embracing Robinson’s program.
“If I had this program when I started my business five years ago, where would I be now?” she pondered. “I talk to my colleagues, and our Chamber is doing things that are light years ahead. These conversations are not happening in other places. JAX Chamber is always keeping up with the curve.”
Baldwin said he is thankful for JAX Chamber and Robinson continually looking for the next thing to empower businesses to grow and succeed. “When he came up with JAX Bridges 10 years ago, they could have done the same curriculum for 10 years. But every year they updated it. This is a great city to start a business, especially when you have resource support like this,” he said.