The panel was hosted by Quinnipiac alumnus Tony DiPietro, managing director of corporate strategy and head of client relations at Piedmont Fund Services. Mathieu Lorentz, director of engineering, AI solutions at T. Rowe Price, and Dillon Edwards, AI strategist and executive director at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, were the panelists.

Asked directly at the start of the panel if AI will replace human productivity in the not too distant future, Edwards reframed the question.

“I think the person that's using AI will definitely overtake those that aren't embracing the new technologies,” Edwards said. “We're not looking to just build robots and have them run J.P. Morgan. We're looking to have AI empower our best-in-class humans, our best-in-class traders, our best-in-class portfolio managers. It’s a question of, How do we continue leveling up the human touch with all of this power?”

Lorentz said that bots aren’t taking over so much as optimizing the more tedious processes workers face, freeing them up to take on tasks that are more intellectually stimulating. Or, as Edwards put it, AI allows employees to cast aside “no joy work.”

The panelists agreed that AI use cases are role-dependent. Sales people, for instance, can use AI tools to gather and analyze data that allows them to allocate more time to their most important clients, Lorentz said. But a role like software engineer still requires deep work.

“That really is a challenge right now, because you send a prompt, you wait 10 minutes, maybe you go get a coffee and you’re not necessarily going through that state of flow,” Lorentz said. “That’s a big risk. How do we recreate that mindset and make sure people are doing deep work and not just using AI to go quickly?”

AI power brings accountability sharply into focus, Edwards said. “You can’t blame a bad trade on AI, just like you wouldn’t want AI to get credit for a good trade,” he said.

The forum drew more than 1,500 participants from 135 colleges and universities. There are 30 panels featuring over 100 speakers, and over 70 companies represented.