Montana’s AI Future: Rethinking How to Staff and Run Your Business

Forecasting our economic future is never easy, but you could make the case that putting those projections together this year will be especially difficult. That’s because layered on top of all of the familiar sources of uncertainty – from recession risks to global political strife – comes a curve ball from the world of computing technology that could profoundly change how we do our jobs and how the economy will operate.

When in the mid-1990s computers finally started to defeat the world’s strongest chess players, it was more of a novelty than anything. But advances in computing power and machine learning, under the general rubric of artificial intelligence (AI), have spawned an avalanche of innovations and investments that mimic what human brains do at higher speeds and lower costs. AI is no longer future-speak. Companies are using it right now in ways that may surprise you.

It is perhaps ironic that a technology many of us fear will eliminate jobs may wind up helping all of us find and retain better workers instead. AI-based tools hold the promise of getting deeper into skills needed to do jobs effectively and getting beyond credentials to assess the skills candidates possess. In tight labor markets, could this be a solution that proves its value?

That’s exactly what we’ll be addressing in our 2025 Economic Outlook Seminars being held around the state in January – March. The changes that are ahead is an especially apt theme for this year’s programs, because looking backwards, it’s clear that many things have changed over the 50-year span that BBER has put these annual programs on in communities around the state. We think that track record of prognosticating helps keep things in perspective during this time of rapid technological change.

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