MARSHALL MONTHLY BRINGS YOU ESSENTIAL NEWS AND EVENTS FROM FACULTY, STUDENTS, AND ALUMNI.
On February 6, USC Marshall’s AI for Business (BUAI) program hosted its first BUAI Industry Summit, bringing together students, faculty, and leaders from emerging markets for discussions on the professional and pedagogical integration of new technology.
Marshall Dean Geoffrey Garrett opened the summit with recorded remarks emphasizing the significant role BUAI plays in preparing students for an ever-shifting professional landscape.
“We all know that BUAI already is an incredible program,” Garrett said. “It’s not only incredible on campus, it’s incredible because of its connectivity to industry. So this summit is a celebration of that and something that’s going to turbocharge our industry engagement.”
Many of the students in the room were current or aspiring entrepreneurs who merge business acumen with technical expertise. Bei Zhang, the vice president and growth at Tanka AI, explained how his company supports founders by pairing them with AI agents. Through extensive development, Zhang said AI will have the capability to adapt to and, eventually, anticipate a business’s tailored needs.
“AI will have the level of intelligence to think, to infer, to reason, to go beyond what you might not be asking the AI to do, but by guessing where the paths might be heading,” Zhang said. “We’re working on building proactiveness into the agent.”
While Zhang spoke of enabling AI’s potential, Ted Rouhani, an investor in nxtlinq, described how his company uses blockchain technology to put guardrails around AI initiative. As Rouhani explained, nxtlinq requires that AI agents submit tokens to gain permission to execute certain actions. Without the permissions encoded within the token, the AI is barred from performing the function.
Rouhani said that technology like nxtlinq protects against the non-human aspects of technology, which have no fear of consequences.
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