First Breakfast Series of 2025 goes digital with focus on AI pluses and pitfalls

Information can inform, educate, persuade, entertain and influence. It can also be used to deceive, defraud and manipulate.

And in the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence, knowing the difference between good and bad information is becoming far more difficult.

“We’re living in a society that the the volume and the velocity of content that is thrown at us that we consume, that we don’t bother fact checking is amazing,” said Jason Crawforth, a tech innovator with three-plus decades working within the technology landscape. “We like content that supports our narratives.”

Crawforth shared his views on AI and its use, both personally and professionally, during a panel discussion, “AI in the Workforce,” hosted by Idaho Business Review Feb. 6 at the Inn at 500 hotel in downtown Boise. More than 100 local business and community leaders attended the session.

The event was the first of five IBR Breakfast Series events slated for this year. Attorney Brad Frazer, a partner at Hawley Troxell, who specializes in internet law and information technology, served as the panel moderator.

Joining Crawforth on the panel were Craig Shaul, a research analyst with the Idaho Department of Labor (IDL); Noah Riley, founder of AI Genius Automations; Dr. Kimberly Gardner, a Science and Technology Policy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Idaho; and Debbie Critchfield, superintendent of Public Instruction for the state of Idaho.

A range of topics discussed centered on the development and access to information in our digital age. During the past 150 years, society has shifted from using the Dewey Decimal System and microfiche, to having virtually all data we access housed on the internet.

Collectively, the panelists agreed that AI is the most “transformative technology” of our age, and it’s here to stay.

As the founder and CEO of SWEAR.com, an award-winning company known for its patent solutions for safeguarding people and organizations from AI threats, Crawforth is quite familiar with AI’s transformative powers.

“I think it will be bigger than the internet,” he said. “The invention of the internet allowed people to accomplish more quicker. I believe this is the next iteration of that.”

For some, AI’s advancements and capabilities are just getting started. The “dial-up stage” is how Shaul described the fast-moving technology.

“Right now we’re talking about the state of AI and technology and how it has impacted the workforce as of January 2025,” he said. “That conversation is going to be a lot different in five, 10 years from now.”

And with the buzz that AI will actually eliminate jobs, a concern the panelists hear often, the more common thought these days is “AI won’t take your job, but a person who can use AI will.”

“It’s the same stuff that’s been happening with automation for the past two decades,” Shaul said. “Once AI gets married with robotics, that’s where we’re probably going to see more of this type of thing.”

Through her position at the U of I, Dr. Gardner works closely with the Idaho Workforce Development Council and the IDL. But it’s business owners, she said, who are “setting expectations” for how AI is going to be used in the workforce.

“It’s not just what skills they will require, but they also set data and technology norms and cultures within their organizations,” Gardner said. “We work with business owners and educators as well.”

This includes the Idaho LAUNCH program to target both adults and students to help produce workers with the skills that are in demand for Idaho’s economy.

“In order to function well in society and in the workplace, everybody is going to have to have some kind of baseline literacy for artificial intelligence,” she said. “Just like they need a baseline literacy in reading and writing.”

In her role overseeing the state’s K-12 education system, Critchfield knows the use of AI is a slippery slope for both students and teachers. Technology, she acknowledged, is now, and will remain a huge part of the educational landscape.

“We want to make sure that our students, when they graduate, know how to do things when they apply for jobs,” Critchfield said. “AI is not masking an ability or an inability to do something that they can’t do. We want to see and view technology as an additive to the skills and capabilities that our young people have, and that that’s the approach that we’re taking.”

When it comes to learning, Critchfield knows the idea is to use AI to enhance education, and not to subvert the process.

“Our responsibility for our students and their education is an introduction to how they use AI as a tool, and how they can incorporate that into their learning rather than as a substitute for what they know,” she said.

When asked to define AI, Riley, who created his own company to help clients harness the power of AI to achieve their goals, said he tells people AI is simply a “tool” and encourages people to view it as such.

“I don’t know what I do that doesn’t use AI,” he said. “I would define it as probably a tool or a technology that seems to be able to do things that we previously thought humans could do.”

It’s the same approach he takes with his clients.

“It’s all about the problems you are solving, not about the tools,” he said. “You need to understand the concepts, understand what AI is good at, what its capabilities are. Once you understand that you actually have a conceptual framework with which to judge other AI tools.”

And tools can often be used for both good and bad. Which presents what some might call a “dark side” to AI, specifically the manipulation of audio and video content for public consumption.

“I identified years ago the ability to use AI to fabricate content,” Crawforth said. “And if you think fake news is bad, wait until you see and hear when AI is used to create content that is imperceptible to humans.”

In the overloaded information age, Crawford strongly feels society must move past the old-school concept of “trust but verify.”

“We’ve grown up in an era where when Walter Cronkite told you something, you believed it,” he said. “Now with all the media and all the different news on the air, there’s a lot of garbage out there.

You need to not trust and then verify.”

Understanding the “limits of AI” is one step he emphasizes to help decipher truth from fiction.

“When ChatGPT came out in late 2022, they had the purest form of the internet and all the content that have come through was created by humans today,” Crawforth said. “In fact, Europol, the European Union’s equivalent of the FBI say they’ve estimated over 90% of internet content will be synthetic by 2026, meaning it will be partially or fully created by AI.”

Research, checking information, asking questions, all are a must for Riley’s clients.

“If you’re the person who Googles something and you believe the first thing that pops up, you’re probably the same person who is going to get fooled by AI,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the technology. The technology doesn’t make you dumb.”

If so, critical thinking skills, whether for students or those in the business world, will be even more relevant, no matter the advancements in technology.

“The more we rely and become dependent on AI tools for things like writing and thinking for us, that that doesn’t bode well,” Gardner said. “We want to use AI in the humanities as something that augments what we should be doing as human beings. So, that framework, really needs to be taught.”

Welcome to AI literacy.

As a longtime educator, who also spent seven years as a member of the Idaho State Board of Education, Critchfield is recommending the Idaho Legislature adopt a digital literacy graduation requirement for all K-12 public school students. A requirement that would focus on actual digital literacy, and not what some may construe as internet safety for kids.

“We’re actually talking about being a critical consumer, scrutinizing critical thinking,” she said. “And one of our responsibilities in education, if not the only responsibility, is to produce functioning adults who can take care of themselves and contribute to their community.”

And in the education arena, there is no time like the present.

“We have an opportunity right now to create what that is,” Critchfield said. “It has to be, I think, very aligned, adaptive and dynamic.”

Being “curious about AI” and “not afraid of it” is the approach Crawforth wants people to take. His four key factors focus on education, legislation, defensive solutions to discredit fake products, and going on the offensive to help guarantee the authenticity of materials produced by AI.

“We have a ways to go. You can’t change a single pixel of our content without it being detected,” he said. “Not today, not 10 years from now, not 30 years from now. It’s impossible. It’s mathematically impossible.”