Beyond the AI Hype: Business Opportunity and Responsibility in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is no longer just the domain of tech giants. At the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce's Eggs & Issues forum in June, three thought leaders from Northeastern University shared an energizing and practical view of how businesses in Maine and beyond can navigate AI adoption responsibly and strategically.

Watch the full session here:

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Mike Pollastri, Senior Vice Provost of The Roux Institute, opened the discussion by positioning AI as a powerful force for regional transformation, driven through partnership and real-world learning.

"How do we grow new businesses, and how do we make sure our talent pool is ready to absorb it? That’s the core mission of the Roux Institute.” —Mike Pollastri

Pollastri heads The Roux Institute at Northeastern University, a graduate campus in Portland built to power Maine’s innovation economy. With a focus on tech, life sciences, and AI, the Roux Institute offers custom workforce training, applied research partnerships, and startup support, all designed to help local businesses grow through access to talent, tools, and cutting-edge expertise.

Usama Fayyad, Senior Vice Provost for AI and Data Strategy, Northeastern University and Founding Executive Director of The Institute for Experiential AI, emphasized that AI is only useful when grounded in human experience and practical deployment.

“Experiential AI is shorthand for AI with a human in the loop… It’s the only AI that works.”—Usama Fayyad

He went on to address the urgency of action:

“If your competitor figures it out and gets a 30% to 80% advantage, there is no catching up. You have to participate in anticipation.”—Usama Fayyad

To help businesses take that first step, our AI Solutions Hub serves as a collaborative engine for building real, working AI systems. Rather than offering one-size-fits-all tools, the Hub partners directly with organizations to develop small, efficient AI models tailored to specific business problems, often with faster results, lower costs, and fewer errors than off-the-shelf solutions. It's where practical experimentation meets long-term strategy.

Dr. Cansu Canca, Director of the Responsible AI Practice, challenged the audience to think about AI not just as a tool for efficiency, but as a moral design challenge:

“We are designing the world. And with more AI systems, we’re designing it in a much more hands-on manner… No AI use case is too mundane to have ethical implications.”—Cansu Canca

Canca leads Northeastern’s Responsible AI Practice, a first-of-its-kind team that embeds ethicists and technologists directly into AI development and deployment processes. Whether a company is building a hiring algorithm, deploying chatbots, or streamlining claims systems, her team works alongside them to evaluate risks, improve outcomes, and ensure the systems are fair, transparent, and aligned with organizational values. The practice is built for action, not just theory, and has supported industry leaders ranging from banks to public health organizations.

She also warned against last-minute ethical reviews, advocating for early, embedded risk analysis:

“Don’t ask ‘Is this ethical?’ right before launch. That’s when I have to say ‘No, and now it’s going to be costly.’”—Cansu Canca

From healthcare diagnostics to small language models tailored to local businesses, the panelists offered real-world examples of AI being used to drive impact right here in Maine. The panel closed with a powerful reminder that while the technology may be complex, the most important part of AI remains very human.

The conversation continued on June 6, when The Roux Institute and The Portland Regional Chamber hosted a follow-up event, AI in Action Business Summit, diving deeper into how local businesses are actively using AI today.