Though AI has existed as a field of study since the 1950s, with the release of ChatGPT in 2022, the technology has leapt from the pages of a sci-fi novel to assert itself in nearly every corner of our lives. Generative AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini offer lightning-fast responses to hundreds of millions of daily queries—from writing emails to coding entire websites—with claims to revolutionize the future of work and relieve its users from mundane drudgery. The process is only beginning; a recent US Census Bureau Business Trends and Outlook Survey projected that businesses adopting AI in their operations would reach 10 percent by the end of 2025, up from 5.7 percent in the third quarter of 2024.

But panelists and attendees at Marist during the June 18 Hudson Valley Artificial Intelligence Summit co-hosted by Dutchess County Government and Marist University conveyed that the current landscape of AI use by businesses is all about balancing the technology’s duality: embracing its potential for positive change while acknowledging its shortcomings and capacity for ill use.

"If there's one governing idea in today's discussion, it's the role of ethics in the developing world of artificial intelligence,” Dr. Geoffrey L. Brackett, the Executive Vice President of Marist University said at the top of the event. “All of us are here looking to share our knowledge, refine our thinking, and understand how best to manage the incredible speed of change we are experiencing."

The Big Tech Approach to AI for Small Businesses

The conferences’ keynote speakers, Falk Steinbrueck, director of AI and Platform Simplification at IBM Z and LinuxONE, and Jamie VanDodick, director of AI Ethics and Governance at IBM, discussed IBM’s approach to developing AI products. For them, ethical AI use means that an AI product is going to augment, not replace human intelligence, and it needs to be transparent about where data and information is coming from and what it’s being used for. In using AI to gather information, it is recommended to verify any facts or figures that it may be falsely providing.

Falk Steinbrueck, director of AI and Platform Simplification at IBM Z and LinuxONE, and Jamie VanDodick, director of AI Ethics and Governance at IBM, discussed IBM’s approach to developing AI products. Photo by Devon Jane Schweizer.

Free AI tools often don’t show citations or sources for the information generated, and can’t explain how or why they gave a particular answer. As AI products grow, particularly generative AI models, it becomes more challenging for even the scientists behind these products to explain how they operate. Steinbrueck and VanDodick advocated for businesses to develop their own AI products for their websites—ones in which any data used or acquired is the business’s own to fit security concerns and better explainability.

Throughout the summit’s panels, attendees learned from executives at Amazon, Marist, IBM, Nuvance Health, Meta, and more that their companies were utilizing AI for everything from predicting evacuation routes in crises to speeding up the process of MRIs. Kevin Cafaro, a principal product manager at Amazon, has been working toward AI image and video generation for brands advertising their products on the website.

“We put a little AI mark on the bottom of everything. The consumer always knows, we're not trying to hide anything,” Cafaro said during the “AI Awareness” panel. “We're just trying to help brands move really fast and destroy the barriers that, today, only big businesses have access to these creative productions.”

The Downsides of the Early AI Landscape

During the “AI: The Good, the Bad, and the Ethical” panel, representatives from the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, New York State Police, Marist, Central Hudson, and Nuvance Health discussed the challenges of balancing AI’s positive potential with its malicious or illegal uses.

Panelists emphasized that businesses have an obligation to be transparent about their uses of AI, but individual users are not abiding by any standard of ethics. Frank LaRocca, the CIO of Central Hudson, expressed concern over the potential for bad actors to infiltrate systems with AI malware that could shut down entire power grids. Eric Bosen, a New York State Police intelligence analyst, revealed that criminals have been using AI to generate child sexual abuse material and commit fraud.

These are some of the worst-case scenario uses of AI, but they underscored that all users still need to remain vigilant—particularly of biases in the software. Since AI is trained on fallible human data and resources, results can’t always be trusted to be balanced or accurate. Even facial recognition AI used by police forces has been found to have racial biases, requiring trained humans to step in and compare results for themselves.

“Artificial intelligence is not intelligent,” Donna Dillenberger, the CTO of IBM Systems Research said during the panel. “AI are systems that can learn what we as humans present to it and other programs. And that means they can also learn our errors and our mistakes. By itself AI is not going to be some super-smart entity. It is up to us to help AI learn things that are useful and accurate that will help us.”

Despite concerns about AI’s shortcomings, in general, the summit’s panelists encouraged more attendees to start implementing it in their personal and professional lives. “I really think it's not a fad. It's going to be the fabric of society,” Cafaro said.

How Hudson Valley Businesses are Using AI

Many attendees agreed that AI is quickly heading for ubiquity in daily business life. One of those attendees was Matt Dorcas, the CMO of Middletown-based BLR Fusion Group, a lifestyle brand that had its beginnings as a custom sports apparel company. Now encompassing casual, athleisure, and corporate lines, the brand has expanded into the Fusion group, with recycling, beverage, real estate, crypto, and a work-in-progress sports complex under its belt.

During Covid, BLR put its casual and athleisure lines on the back burner to focus on performance sportswear. As CMO, Dorcas’s mission is finding a way back to these lines—and he’s doing so with AI.


For Dorcas, AI is a tool to research and brainstorm ideas. He’s also been using AI to help with image generation for advertising and branding, or at least attempting to. After shooting apparel on a mannequin, he tried to generate the product on an AI model, but it was frequently changing the look of products and words on T-shirts. While the technology continues to develop, he is primarily using AI image generation to explain his vision to graphic designers who then create the final product.

“The biggest reason why I use AI is to save time,” Dorcas says. “I still work with web developers. I still work with graphic designers. I still work with photographers. I still work with people to create products, but AI is getting us there faster.”

Though trying to navigate AI to suit his needs has been difficult, Dorcas still has faith in its future. “It's almost like going back to school,” he says. “I definitely find it challenging, but I also love a good challenge."

Tiffany Tibbot, founder of boutique marketing agency Spill the Tea Digital, is another attendee ready to embrace the future of AI. Tibbot spent 12 years in Manhattan managing digital marketing and ecommerce for big fashion brands before moving to the Hudson Valley in 2024 to independently manage clients. Serving as a director of ecommerce for brands like Kate Spade and Krewe prepared her for what she really wanted to do: help local companies that aren't as experienced with the new age of digital marketing.

Whether using AI-writing-assistance tool Grammarly, making content in AI video creation and editing studio Augie, or creating first-person POV videos of her horseback riding with her Meta AI glasses, Tibbot estimates she has used AI every single day for the past nine months. Similar to Dorcas, Tibbot has also used AI to create sample content to show to graphic designers and get products closer to her original vision.

Tiffany Tibbot, founder of Spill the Tea Digital. Photo courtesy of Spill the Tea Digital.

“It has closed those rounds and rounds of editing that happen so that I can communicate what's in my head a lot easier to my graphic designers,” she says. “You cannot take the creativity that comes out of those artists. The technology doesn't exist right now, I don't know if it's going to exist in the future, but you cannot recreate that.”

She has challenged the graphic designers she works with to educate themselves on AI tools they can be using, asking designers who are skilled in static images to attempt AI video creation to push them outside of their comfort zones.

Tibbot also shares similar concerns with the panelists about open-source AI and inadequate control of data input and output; however, she feels comfortable with the paid subscriptions she utilizes and was quick to share what she’s learned with other business owners at the conference.

“There weren't a lot of small business owners at the conference. It seemed to be more academics and people that were in the AI space,” Tibbot says. “It's exciting for me and I would love to help bring it to businesses in the Hudson Valley in a thoughtful and educational ‘you-don't-have-to-be afraid-of-this’ way.”

The Hudson Valley Artificial Intelligence Summit made one thing clear: AI is no longer just the domain of Silicon Valley engineers or science fiction enthusiasts. It’s here, and it’s already reshaping how we work, create, and communicate. For Tibbot, the lessons of Hudson Valley Artificial Intelligence Summit reflected the realities that she and other attendees in the small business space were already feeling: excitement about AI’s future paired with a healthy distrust. “My three takeaways from the summit were to use it, question it, and learn it the right way now,” says Tibbot. “Because whether you like it or not, it's coming.”

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Written by
Devon Jane Schweizer