AI was front and center at this week’s SMC3 Connections event in Palm Beach, Fla., a less-than-truckload (LTL) industry conference that brought together transportation carriers, logistics service providers, technology companies, and more from across the North American trucking industry.
The event opened with Stanford University professor and AI expert Jeremy Utley, who discussed how humans “unleash the true power of AI,” and continued with sessions focused on both the risks and potential rewards inherent in the quickly advancing technology. Here are four messages from the three-day event:
- Utley, who is also co-host of the AI-focused podcast Beyond the Prompt, emphasized the importance of shifting your focus from “using AI” to “working with AI,” both in business and personally. He said that viewing AI as an assistant or teammate, rather than a tool, is the best way to reap the benefits of the technology, explaining that users should engage with AI by continually asking questions and being specific about the sources they are seeking for input and advice. Utley also cautioned against using free AI sources, instead advocating for subscription models such as Anthropic’s Claude AI assistant.
- In an industry leadership series, Chris Wyndham, CEO of transportation management system (TMS) provider Revenova, talked about moving from using AI to automate mundane tasks toward a more “humanized” approach that helps to accelerate humans’ capabilities in the workplace. He predicted that within 12 to 24 months, most pricing and freight management tasks will be automated via AI—freeing up workers’ time for more strategic efforts.
- Representatives from AI-driven workflow platform company Augment and trucking intelligence platform GenLogs discussed the dangers of AI-driven freight fraud and how logistics companies can fight back with technology-driven solutions of their own. Augment’s Chief Commercial Officer Justin Hall and GenLogs’ CEO Ryan Joyce outlined anti-fraud strategies that combine AI and sensor-based truck monitoring networks, including real-time identity validation, lane-level autonomy detection, and visibility models built to stop fraud before it starts.
- Echo Global Logistics’ Chief Information Officer Zach Jecklin and University of Tennessee Professor Alan Amling discussed the importance of data in developing an AI strategy and identified a crucial investment gap in most companies’ work: A disproportionate focus on technology versus changement management. Amling said most companies invest 90% in technology and 10% in the tools required to ensure that employees, and the workflows they depend upon, will be able to make the most of that technology. He said change management is the biggest problem in the industry’s AI efforts and recommended a top-down approach to projects, in which all levels of the organization are involved and invested in those efforts.
SMC3 Connections was held June 29-July1 at The Breakers Palm Beach. The group will meet next in January for its JumpStart Conference, which will take place in Atlanta, January 25-27.
