In this episode of EHSDA Shorts, Camille Oakes, CSP, MEng, SMS, President and CEO, Better Safety and Katie Martin, Director of Sustainability, Avetta, talk about how the workplace can benefit from AI. The conversation is moderated by Jay Kumar, Editor-in-Chief of EHS Daily Advisor.
This clip was taken from a webinar titled “Panel Session/Town Hall | Future-Proof Your Safety Program: A Panel Discussion About Safety Culture” as part of EHS Safety Culture NOW.” The full session is available for FREE on-demand here.
Transcript: (edited for clarity)
Question: Can the Workplace Benefit from AI?
Kumar: All right moving on, not so much a question but a comment: AI will still require human operator interaction, safety files will still require the oversight review and updates by a safety professional.
Camille, what what are your thoughts on that?
Oakes: Yeah, I agree. I think, obviously, there’s going to be people involved, but we have to consider if the AI is being this repository for information when it used to be our brains that was the repository for information.
We’re “what do we do now? what do we do with our time now?,” instead, and I think it’s going to be great and as long as there are rules put into place around it, working with it, and then we do what we’ve always needed to do which is understand our people and work on our people skills.
Kumar: Katie, any thoughts on AI as a supplement?
Martin: Yeah, I think I’m a little reticent around a broad brush of AI in this space especially because safety is so important that, obviously, we don’t want to relinquish all of that.
I do think there’s going to be a consolidation of root data and box checking that is taken off plates and now folks can utilize that to make data-driven decisions so it’s about how do we interpret and extrapolate this data and what is it telling us about our safety needs or our people needs in this space and becoming comfortable with that as as managers or as folks in the health and safety space over time.
