St. Louis workplaces grapple with AI opportunities—and fears

The recent meteoric rise of artificial intelligence tools has brought with it heaps of hype surrounding its seemingly endless potential use cases. 

Some tech billionaires envision a world where AI replaces most everything humans currently do. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates suggested in March it would replace doctors and teachers. Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg went further, saying an AI could be your friend or even therapist.

Those cases may be a bit of a stretch, but in the workforce, there is real consternation over AI replacing every job previously held by a human. Local tech leaders say that, while that’s far-fetched, companies and nonprofits alike need to adapt to AI or risk being left in the dust. 

Some St. Louis-based initiatives are helping local companies do just that. TechSTL— the region’s tech council, composed of local tech entrepreneurs, companies, universities, and nonprofits—is working with the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis to offer AI bootcamps for small businesses and the Community Foundation and United Way on AI programming for nonprofits.

Executive Director Emily Hemingway says that using AI smartly will be essential to future success in the workplace—a sentiment that she says was repeated widely among attendees of Tech Week last month.

“AI won’t take your job, but the person using it will,” she says. “It’s not even the competitive advantage, it’s the standard.” 

A new study by St. Louis-based global digital consultancy Perficient explores that paradigm, and how workers feel about it. Its State of GenAI in the Workforce surveyed 1,054 office workers in the U.S. on how they currently incorporate AI into their job and what they expect it will change for them in the future. 

Eric Walk, principal for enterprise data strategy at Perficient, notes that people who were in more entry-level jobs or further down a company’s hierarchy held higher expectations that AI would take their jobs compared to company executives, who were much more optimistic.

“There’s very little fear at the executive levels, and I think that’s telling,” he says. “There’s a lot of concern bubbling in the line of workers and folks at the bottom of that pyramid that is not well understood by the executives at firms.”

One of Walk’s takeaways from the study is that AI is a critical tool to augment an individual’s capabilities and capacity in their job.

But there’s a disconnect. Perficient’s study reveals a little more than half of workers surveyed see their companies effectively using and implementing AI tools versus the other half that said their companies aren’t using AI at all or just beginning to experiment with it. 

The responses illuminated two key barriers to more AI integration, Walk says.

“What they reported is often that the tools aren’t fit for purpose or that they don’t trust them for one reason or another, whether it’s with intellectual property, or trusting them to write accurate responses or keep their data private,” he said. 

Walk adds that company leaders shouldn’t simply encourage employees to experiment with general purpose tools, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini or others, to figure out the best way to use them. 

“Leaving people to figure it out and explore on their own is not really effective with these tools,” he says. “It has to be a guided experience. To make AI valuable in the workplace, you’re changing the fundamentals of how people do their job.”

AI is a bit of a natural extension of the automation that’s made sectors like manufacturing much leaner since the industrial revolution, Walk says. It’s jarring now because the office work that’s being automated now had been insulated from advances before, he adds.

Even so, jumps in efficiency enabled by AI only happen when an organization implements these tools effectively, Hemingway says. This new paradigm places much more pressure on individual companies and regional organizations, like TechSTL, to train the workforce how best to use and engage with AI, she says.

“There’s definitely an introductory level training that everyone needs to have, because if they are not comfortable using this technology, they will be left behind,” she says. “This is insight that is now becoming relevant to every single industry [and] occupation.”

Chris Bethel, the founder of St. Louis-based Curate Therapeutics, says that small businesses and nonprofits stand to benefit as much from AI as large corporations. Bethel studies and presents on how entrepreneurs can use AI tools successfully.

“It’s not something you can stand on principle, that ‘I’m not going to use AI,’” Bethel says. “It is transformative for business development, especially for the small business who are starting off and needing to do things that are as capital efficient as possible.”

When using the right prompts, AI chatbots can offer valuable feedback on business plans or strategy, much like an expert consultant, he said. The difference is that building a few custom bots on an AI platform won’t cost hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour, Bethel adds.

“Finding their time and attention is difficult, and the price point is unachievable for a lot of companies, especially small businesses, that are focusing on niche markets, ones that aren’t necessarily venture viable,” he says. “The return just doesn’t match up. In those cases, AI can step in as a very good alternative.”

Bethel cautions AI cannot replace human interaction and feedback, although it can help streamline the process before seeking that feedback. While AI can help build a strong pitch deck and investment proposal, he says that won’t immediately secure an investment. 

And AI will likely mean investors will see many more quality applicants for funding, Bethel says, “which puts all the more emphasis on the in-person vibe check.”