State’s ‘A.I. for Manufacturing’ Course Comes to McKenzie

McKENZIE (December 10) — Industries from middle and west Tennessee visited Bethel University’s Vera Low Center for Student Enrichment Wednesday to attend one of four “A.I. for Manufacturing” training courses held in the state of Tennessee. The courses are a partnership between the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the University of Tennessee Center for Industrial Services (UTCIS), who seek to teach manufacturing leaders a beginner’s guide to using artificial intelligence (A.I.) in the workplace.

Eighteen people attended the four-hour training course, representing industries as west as Memphis and as east as Mount Juliet. Locally, representatives from McKenzie’s Haven Steel and McKenzie Valve and Machine, and Martin’s Stanley Black and Decker gained knowledge from the course.

McKenzie Chamber of Commerce and Industrial Development Board Director Monica Heath said it was a very hands-on class, with groups working together to solve case problems with- and without using A.I.

Attendees learned how to properly command several A.I. software systems — from ChatGPT, to Google Gemini, to Perplexity — to receive the best results.

With each system, though, attendees learned the importance of creating subscriptions. Otherwise, their entries would be less secure, at risk of being repurposed and shared to other users.

Heath said her main takeaway from the course was that an A.I. response will only be as good as the information the A.I. software is fed. The course also instilled the notion that, as long as A.I.’s functionality requires human commands, people will not lose their jobs to the technology.

The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s vision is for every manufacturing employee to receive A.I. training and to develop a growth mindset. The McKenzie workshop was the third of four beginner courses across Tennessee. The first two courses — one in Nashville and one in Memphis — sold out. The last course is in Pulaski.

The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry and UTCIS will continue their partnership with intermediate and advanced A.I. training courses, to be scheduled at later dates.