Hoping to learn more about a growing technology and how it could affect their industry, workers from Premier Communications met at Terrace View Event Center for an all-day crash course on artificial intelligence on Feb. 16.<\/p>\n
Premier Communications CEO Ryan Boone said a prolonged discussion on AI at the company has been in the works for a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year myself alongside others on the leadership team really decided that artificial intelligence and these new tools at our disposal are not going away,\u201d Boone said. \u201cWe really needed to take some time and invest in learning more about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The discussions culminated into plans for an all-day seminar with guest speakers to learn about AI. Taking more than 100 staff out for an all-employee training day was a first for the company, said Boone.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really the first time we\u2019ve done it in general, not just AI related. Generally speaking, we\u2019ve not closed the office before to really invest in our team like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As a technology company, Boone said it would be difficult to not take a look at the capabilities of AI to potentially improve efficiency and customer service.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to do so, and we\u2019re going to do it safely from a customer data perspective and do it responsibly. We\u2019re not going to stick our head in the sand and act like AI isn\u2019t coming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, the CEO acknowledge that not everyone at Premier has a full understanding of AI or what tools exist.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike most organizations, we have a pretty wide range of AI adoption within the organization. Some have never touched it, others are building tools and almost their own large language models,\u201d Boone said. \u201cOur main focus for last Monday was really to try and set a baseline. To give everybody this base understanding of what AI is, how it can be potentially used safely within our organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CEO noted that the AI field is full of jargon and the company even made a glossary of terms for its employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, people might throw around just the term AI or Agentic AI or AGI and what does that really mean? We kind of defined those basic terms so that people know what it means when we say it,\u201d Boone said.<\/p>\n
Boone added that the all-day seminar was also a good chance to remind employees of the company\u2019s existing AI polices and that not every tool is free to use.<\/p>\n
While Premier has approved CoPilot for use and is testing Claude, models such as Grok are not approved.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou do have to be cautious and safe with what you put into AI and which models,\u201d Boone said<\/p>\n
Besides defining the language of AI, staff members broke into groups to compete in a number of activities to learn how AI tools can be used.<\/p>\n
One of the activities involved groups designing a business proposal for a 13-year-old during the summer. Groups were required to use AI tools to design a name, logo, mission and financial statements.<\/p>\n
\u201cKind of an iterative process, one step at a time. We actually submitted them all digitally and had each group vote on their favorite,\u201d Boone said. \u201cJust kind of a fun way to do some hands-on learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CEO said he received positive feedback from the activities as employees got the chance to play with the tool.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some people it opened their eyes to what\u2019s possible with AI, and we were just kind of scratching the surface,\u201d he said. \u201cOur main goal is to give everybody that light bulb moment, that they do something and they use AI to help and go, \u2018Wow, I can\u2019t believe it can do that, I wonder if it can also do this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
After the strong response, Boone and the leadership team are planning more training events going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to have some more hands on and virtual training on AI throughout the year, but not another all employee in person training,\u201d he said. \u201cThe overall feedback of the event that day was very positive so we will probably do it again in 2027; although, the topic and format may change.\u201d<\/p>\n
How to incorporate AI<\/p>\n
While Premier did spend the day learning about AI, uses at the company are not set in stone. Boone said the majority of uses at the company are internal and are not built into any systems yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe as a CEO, I use AI daily in helping me do quite a bit, honestly. It can be everything from helping me put a job description together to a business plan for a new opportunity. Help me analyze some of my writing to make sure it hits the right market or audience,\u201d said Boone. \u201cHonestly for us we\u2019re at this crawl, walk, run, phase and I say we\u2019re at the crawling stage right now. Just getting comfortable with it and using it.\u201d While some have only used AI for daily writing, the CEO said a member of the accounting team was able to program Claude to help her fill out PDF forms.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was able to put a couple entries in and it would automatically fill out the rest of the form and it was something she had to do manually before,\u201d said Boone.<\/p>\n
Boone said he is looking forward to the potential uses Premier can find as they continue to explore AI tools.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s tools we are looking at right now that might help us even predict network issues before they even happen just by noticing different things going on in the network,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s just a whole host of things that I\u2019m hoping we can do in the next 24 months.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CEO said that any choice of model would be through a vendor and while they may adopt AI customer service tools, humans will still be present in person or by phone call.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the important things to us as a local community company is we don\u2019t want to lose that human element or human touch,\u201d Boone said. \u201cOur goal with incorporating AI into our organization is that it\u2019s a tool in our toolbox; it\u2019s not the solution where we are going to transition everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boone added that the leadership at Premier is aware of concerns over AI taking jobs away from people.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI isn\u2019t going to be something that we use to just replace people. Our goal isn\u2019t to downsize our staff by incorporating AI into things. Our goal is to free up existing teams because we already run kind of lean,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hoping to learn more about a growing technology and how it could affect their industry, workers from Premier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,231245,231246,231244,452,453],"class_list":["post-509482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-premier-communications","tag-ryan-boone","tag-sioux-center","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}