RIVERTON — When President Donald Trump’s team was negotiating with the Ukraine for mineral rights, there was a Wyoming figure in the room observing what was going on.
That was Mike Wandler, president of Gillette-based L&H Industrial Inc.
What he saw in the room is something he believes will soon become much more widespread in the business world at all levels. That something is artificial intelligence, ramping up human capabilities and giving those who are most adept a huge advantage.
“(They) had the leadership of Ukraine in the room,” Wandler said. “And they were negotiating with the Trump team as we were sitting there talking.
“And there was a lady sitting in the room, texting back and forth with the Trump team about mineral rights, and (the Ukraine team) couldn’t keep up.”
That was despite 90 Ph.D. degrees behind the lady, all working to help her, Wandler said.
“The Trump team had AI,” he added, which was clearly giving America a huge advantage.
“That’s what a big deal this is,” Wandler said. “And that’s how it’s affecting the world.”
Because of that and other things he has seen happening in his own business, Wandler told a group of business leaders gathered in Riverton at the Central Wyoming College for the Central Wyoming Innovation & Entrepreneurship Conference that now is the time to jump on the AI train — or get left behind.
“It’s a huge, huge competitive advantage that any entrepreneur should be thinking of,” Wandler said. “If you’re not using AI and your competitors are, you’re going to look silly. They’re going to be five or 10 times faster than you and their costs are going to be 90% or 99% cheaper than yours.”
In Wandler’s view, AI isn’t useful without a human in the loop. Someone has to direct the work in the first place, and someone has to check the output, making sure it’s actually right and sensible. That’s why he’s not worried that AI will “steal” all the jobs from people.
But it is allowing his company to do more with less, and he’s seeing it as a way to expand his operation without adding as many employees as he once would have expected.
That’s going to mean he can pay the employees he does have more, Wandler said, something he believes in doing so his company can attract the brightest and the best.
Humans who are already using AI are going to start looking superhuman compared to everyone else in terms of how much they’re accomplishing, he said.
“If you wonder how somebody else is doing something, it’s probably AI,” Wandler said.
Skip the AI Degree For Now
The past two years, Wandler has wrapped AI into every piece of his third-generation, family-owned business at L&H, which provides engineering and design, manufacturing and repair, and field services to heavy industries around the world.
It doesn’t take a computer degree to leverage AI right now, he added. He didn’t achieve this shift by going out and hiring an expensive AI expert with a fancy computer degree.
“They just have to have passion and desire,” Wandler said. “Matter of fact, if they had a degree in AI, it’s probably obsolete. Even if they got their degree two months ago, everything’s different and everything will be different two months from now.”
Instead, what Wandler suggests is settling on someone in the company who is either already digging into AI, or capable and interested in digging into it, and making them the company’s “czar” of AI.
“I went back to my son, who is my business partner, and asked him, ‘Would you do this? Would you be the czar?’” Wandler recalled. “And he’s like, ‘Sure. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll do it.’”
Before long, Wandler’s son was figuring things out that could help the company and sharing it with others, who were in turn digging in and figuring other things out and spreading these ideas across the company.
The company now has between 20 and 30 people who Wandler considers AI “czars,” and he’s seeing wild productivity gains across the board.
“When we look at AI at least doubling what all of us can do, more than doubling what I’m capable of doing, I can take more time off,” Wandler said. “I’m down to working four days a week. I can do 12 days a week worth of work.”
Wandler believes this will make it easier for him to meet his goal of growing L&H without enlarging workforce as much as he’d thought he would have to do. And, he added, that means he’s going to pay the people he does employ more.
What L&H Is Using AI To Do
Wandler started out using AI to answer emails, write letters and make quotes — the easy, kind of beginner things to do.
He’s also been using it to measure performance and prepare reports, including pulling spreadsheets and making graphs for the report.
He’s started experimenting with additional uses, like an AI chat bot who can assist in troubleshooting common problems.
“I used to have three guys who were taking phone calls, ‘Hey, my machine is hot, or it’s giving me this alarm, or what’s the pressure supposed to be over here,’” Wandler said. “We loaded all of those things into the chat bot, so now they can just ask the chat bot, and I freed those three people up to train the chat bot or do something else.”
Wandler also made a chat bot recently on mental fitness.
For that, he wanted to make sure it was ultra secure, so he trained it to make sure any data was immediately limited, so that nobody could scrape the Internet for it or see it at any time in the future.
“It is possible to make your AI more discreet than anything you’ve ever seen,” he said. “And so, we’re integrating AI into every corner of our business. And, as you can see, it’s like hiring genius interns with no ego, and they never stop working.”
Wandler said he’s working on more next-level uses for AI, such as reinventing workloads and reinventing business models.
“We’re using software to help us plan new product launches or playing with new businesses,” he said. “And this is the part that a lot of people will say, ‘Well, I’m not going to use it because I’m not sure that it’s secure.’”
But, Wandler said, subscriptions are available for secure AI products that can ensure proprietary information doesn’t get prematurely released.
Splitting The AI Benefit
Wandler thinks of AI as an employee he’s hiring and training, one that will incorporate not only all of his Human Resources protocols, but also his business mission and the organizational culture he wants at L&H.
It’s not really any different, in his mind, than buying tools, like a new CNC machine or a nice crane, which helps his employees do things easier and better.
“That is AI on steroids,” Wandler said. “So, now I can give everyone, all of my employees, an assistant, or 10 assistants, that didn’t cost me much. Thirty bucks a month — and it makes them twice as productive.”
But, Wandler cautioned, it’s a mistake to think productivity gains from AI should translate to pressing more productivity from the human beings using that AI.
“I actually saw a Harvard Business Review article on this, and some CEO was going on about, ‘Well, I put in AI and all of a sudden my people are 40% more productive,” he said. “’And well, what am I going to backfill that 40% with?’”
That’s the wrong attitude, Wandler said.
“The right attitude is, ‘I give you an AI assistant. Instead of working 50 hours a week, you’re going to be able to get your job done in 30 hours a week. If you want to work 40, that’s great. You’re going to get more done, you’re going to take more time off, and I can pay you just as much, or probably more than I pay you right now, because your productivity is enhanced.’”
By splitting the benefit of AI with employees, Wandler believes his workers will find better life-balance, and he will have better employees. That’s a winning trade on several levels, not least of which is retention.
“They’re going to stay with you,” Wandler said. “And I always think, human in the loop. But this is incredible, and it’s coming incredibly fast.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
