Get ready for AI BizTimes Media Milwaukee

In the fall of 2016, Oliver Buechse, a Green Bay-based strategy consultant, attended a conference in Silicon Valley with a focus on disruption in the financial industry. Interacting with the artificial intelligence and fintech community, Buechse noticed something different about the discussions there. AI, clearly, had already arrived on the West Coast. "All of California was abuzz about AI," Buechse said. "I thought, why aren't we talking about this in Wisconsin?" Wisconsin's apparent tardiness to the conversation concerned Buechse and he left compelled to spread the word. "Then I thought, 'Well, what am I going to do about it now that I know?'" he said. Eliciting fear or optimism, hype or indifference, artificial intelligence can be an elusive concept to pin down. Leading thinkers in the tech industry diverge on the subject. Entrepreneur Elon Musk has made headlines with near-apocalyptic predictions that the race for artificial intelligence will ignite World War III and that AI poses an existential threat to humans. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, meanwhile, has dismissed such concerns.