he push and pull between adopting AI as a technology to make everyday tasks easier and putting too much stock in the information AI is providing is real. Case in point: Alaska Department of Education and Early Development staff used generative AI to draft a proposed policy on smartphone use in Alaska schools, and the document failed to disclose the department’s use of AI. What’s worse, some of the AI-generated content cited nonexistent scholarly articles.
But with appropriate oversight, AI is proving to be a valuable tool, particularly to small businesses where offloading mundane tasks frees human staff to focus on tasks that make better use of their skills.
“It can break [the process of creating a business plan] down into small, bite-sized pieces for them. It takes the ‘go write the whole section’ of a business plan into ten questions that they can write one at a time. They can break it down and talk about their business plans in ways that are not overwhelming,” she says.
Not every business specializes in communications, but every business must communicate about itself from time to time. “A company might be faced with providing a company description and they give me a one-word answer. This… helps them express themselves much more clearly,” Grabowski says.
For architecture and engineering businesses, Grabowski says AI assistance can help translate industry jargon into more accessible language for non-industry professionals.
AI can also be useful in finding basic industry data—but users must be meticulous about checking facts. Asking questions such as, “How many architecture firms are in Alaska?” or “Which area of Anchorage has the highest density of coffee shops?” can help research whether a community has space for the service a business owner might want to provide, assuming the data proves reliable.
“We do also caution our clients that it is AI and it is not always right,” Grabowski notes. “Always check the source. AI can pull from some really terrible sources and from some that are just not accurate—and it might be pulling from some sources that are not up to date.”
She adds that ChatGPT, a tool released by OpenAI in 2022 that SBDC regularly suggests clients use, should be used as a starting point or to assist with ideas; users should be careful not to just use its responses outright.
She notes that some SBDC clients share their business plan, and “it was clear ChatGPT wrote it. There are no specifics.”
SBDC is not the only entity looking for specific details in a business plan. “We have lenders we work with who send clients back and say, ‘This is ChatGPT. You definitely did not write this.’ There are definitely time-saving aspects to AI, but it is definitely not human,” she says. “This is why I think it’s great for kick-starting conversations or kick-starting brainstorming sessions. But for other things, be very careful with what you are quoting.”
“When you are a small business owner, everything is a project. Even something like, ‘How am I going to schedule my employees? I have six employees and 45 hours, how can I schedule them?’ Sometimes you don’t have time with a paper and pen to make a schedule,” she says.
In addition to automating administrative tasks or helping to eliminate jargon in communications, and, Grabowski notes that generative AI can be a useful tool for marketing.
“Especially for doing things you’ve been doing for a long time,” she says, “like a physical fitness business marketing in January, ‘New Year, New You’—we’ve been doing that so many years. Marketing is the bane of small businesses. It can help with that, especially in places where there are no marketing firms. How do you market your small business in your small town?”
The Alaska SBDC is home to the AI Resource Program, which provides several resources, including free white papers, on the SBDC website to help small business owners get started with AI. In 2024, the AI Resource Program launched thirty custom AI tools for business advising and daily operations, with nearly 2,000 uses to date.
The SBDC has also engaged with UAA’s MBA program, which features an AI component, in discussions about AI tools and their potential applications for small businesses to automate tasks, make data-driven decisions, and improve operational efficiency, ensuring they can thrive in the AI-driven economy.
Bettisworth North
Jon McVay, president of the Project Management Institute (PMI) Alaska Chapter, says the organization is “trying to be at the forefront of engaging and integrating AI… without forcing early adoption at the risk of security issues. We’re trying to be responsible for how we integrate it.”
PMI is a global member organization with more than 500 members in Alaska, in industries from hospital project management to information technology and construction.
“If you use project management, we’re for you,” he says. It’s a nonprofit, volunteer-led organization that aims to promote, educate, and prepare future project managers. McVay adds, “We have introduction training that varies for members, according to what they want to do. We have our own project management platform that is PMI Infinity.”
The platform, he says, offers an integrated AI tool that allows users to ask questions related to project management. “It tends to be a little more curated for the things that we do,” McVay notes.
McVay says some members have a deeper AI focus: one is writing code that applies to various AI models, enhancing their usability for PMI members. Another introduced them to a user-peer platform that allows users to look at how new AI tools perform.
“That way they don’t have to use the AI to determine which AI they want to use,” McVay says. “Maybe there’s a contract AI that we can run a contract through, and it highlights things that are troubling for the contract.”
There are programs users can use to analyze a proposal in response to a formal request for proposals or tools that can be used for estimating how many items of a certain kind (electrical outlets, for example, or hallway lights in a building) are needed for a particular construction project.
About every six months, the organization holds a membership meeting focusing on AI, offering suggestions for how to apply some of the best AI tools that currently exist, including software that handles tasks such as generating daily project update reports.
“AI has been helpful in speeding up more rote tasks such as developing agendas and as an initial review of written responses and narratives, but in its current state AI is most useful in a reactionary role rather than generative,” says Senior Architect David Popiel.
Jack Danberg, a Bettisworth North architect, says industry software is increasingly incorporating AI features, but Bettisworth remains fairly conservative about how it uses them.
“We’re trying to use it to lead to a better service for the client and an elevated product. Our biggest use is helping us with what we would consider more of the mundane tasks: basic spell check, consistency, tone, messaging. As far as the design side of it, it’s very exciting to see where it’s going, but it’s still early days for that,” Danberg says.
ChungTse Lin, an architect in Bettisworth’s Fairbanks office, says AI is useful in calculations. He and Popiel note that the company can use AI for staffing a project, and for other calculations one might develop using an Excel spreadsheet.
“AI can help with that and make it go quite a bit quicker,” Popiel says.
If the company is designing an energy efficient building that incorporates daylighting—minimizing the need for electrical lighting by incorporating natural light—AI can help calculate what percentage of the outer wall should be windows.
“We’re heading to a time where we can talk to our design software and ask what percentage of my design is glazing,” Danberg notes.
Lin says the tools are not far off—currently, an architect needs to add in parameters and get a response from AI; soon, AI will be able to generate what parameters are needed to make that calculation on its own.
However, skepticism about reliability of data remains. In the “daylighting” example, is AI equipped to understand how little daylight Alaska receives in the winter and incorporate that into the calculation, for example?
“There are so many unique things for designing here, and AI needs to build for that,” Popiel notes.
“Alaska is not just Alaska,” adds Lin. “There’s Fairbanks, Anchorage, Southeast… There isn’t just one design. Alaska is pretty unique; we have very different regions.”
Bettisworth North
“It feels like the majority of AI influence is around the edges; find a specific data set you can put pretty good parameters around,” notes Popiel.
But the tools are advancing, Danberg says. Seemingly every new or updated software program is incorporating AI into its design to create a dialog between user and software.
“The big shift, fundamentally, with AI is, across the board, it’s going to revolutionize people’s relationship with software,” Danberg says. “You don’t have to learn to use the tools within a software program; you just need to learn how to talk to the software. We’re not there yet, but there is really some amazing data coming out.”
Bettisworth North, like many other architecture and engineering firms, is actively studying AI to find ways to use the technology to improve efficiency, customer relations, and to perform better as a whole. Employees there have discussed how to engage with and grow AI use, Popiel says. Marketing and Proposal Manager Sue Gillespie says more than three-quarters of the Bettisworth North staff have participated in some sort of AI training, whether at conferences and seminars or elsewhere.
“It’s a firm-wide focus; everybody is kind of excited about it, everyone is intrigued by it,” Gillespie says.
Popiel adds, “AI is here; you have almost a responsibility to understand the impact and engage with it, it’s such a fundamental change.”