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Table of Experts — Artificial intelligence in enterprise: Houston Tech leaders on what's real, what's next, and what's at risk

On June 4, the Houston Business Journal gathered a panel of Houston-area CIOs and digital strategy experts for a roundtable discussion on artificial intelligence. This group of industry leaders explored how AI is already being applied across business verticals, the risks and limitations they're navigating, and what leaders should be doing now to prepare for the exponential pace of change. Heather Orrico, Vice President, Comcast Business: What's one way your organization is using AI that sets it apart, but that also keeps you cautious as you scale? Atif Riaz, CIO/CTO, Murphy Oil Corporation: Besides general productivity use cases, one novel use case for my team was utilizing AI to pick high performing teams for different projects. We already had the personality assessment data, and AI helped us figure out who might be best suited for certain roles on a project. Of course you always have to watch out for hallucinations. AI has huge potential for building better teams, but you have to set boundaries. Randy Volkin, CIO, Perry Homes: It's not important that every step forward has to be an innovation. There are a lot of commoditized tools and practices in AI that we are adopting that can make us better. There's a sense of shared exploration across industries right now, especially at the corporate level. If you can tap into that, you can make a real difference without high degrees of risk. Ashok Kurian, AVP of Data and AI Innovation, Texas Children's Hospital: HIPAA has very rigid rules about data, but we're further along than many other healthcare institutions. We have many examples of AI uses that improve care, reduce administrative overhead and ultimately allow our world-renowned clinicians to spend more time with patients and patient families. That's why people come to Texas Children's Hospital, we explore every avenue to ensure our patients are treated with the best possible quality of care. Jeff Green, CIO, Strike, LLC: We use AI to speed up risk assessments on bids. That process used to be a six-week, five-figure engagement. Now we feed the info into our AI model and get what we need in a fraction of the time. That frees up time and employee resources to go fix problems rather than just diagnose them, and it has reduced our legal cost. Everyone's happy about those benefits. Keith Tomshe, Manager of Digital Video, KHOU: We're experimenting with AI for news production, automatically generating versions of a story for broadcast, digital, and social. It's helped in places like SEO tagging and repackaging content. But adoption is slow unless it's built into existing tools. If you tell people 'go try this on your own,' it rarely happens. Viet Dang, Director of Data Services, Houston-Galveston Area Council: We're still in the early stages of our AI journey. We created a safe space for staff to explore the potential and possibilities of three large language models—Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. As a public-serving organization, our adoption has been thoughtful and cautious. We're especially mindful of protecting sensitive information and ensuring that nothing is shared inappropriately. With most of our funding coming from the federal government, we see AI as an opportunity to improve efficiency, and we're exploring how these tools can complement and streamline the way we serve the region. Traci Pelter, President & Publisher, Houston Business Journal: What's a tech decision you've made recently that felt like a real turning point? Ashok Kurian: About five years ago we decided to move more of our workload onto the cloud. It's given us the scale and flexibility we need for AI. The GPU access alone is game-changing for our algorithms. Jeff Green: We're working on making our unstructured data more usable. Right now, we have documents all over the environments. This DLP project will allow us to get Microsoft Copilot deployed for the company, but we've got to clean up the document sprawl first. Randy Volkin: We view it as important to continuously improve processes in addition to adopting technology to position the company for continued growth. We recently undertook a major project to transform our ERP platform and felt like we were able to achieve both. It was a very large undertaking but we couldn't be happier with the result. Keith Tomshe: What's interesting is how some people at the station have gone full steam ahead with AI—like building their own apps to adapt content for different platforms—while others barely touch it. If it's integrated into a platform, people use it. Otherwise, it doesn't stick. Justin Galbraith, Senior Manager Enterprise Sales, Comcast Business: I've got a customer using AI in video monitoring to prevent theft — like catching suspicious activity before it happens. Anyone else doing things like that? Permit processes, inspections, medical procedures? Ashok Kurian: We're testing computer vision and image recognition in the field of pediatric radiology, to ensure our radiologists are focused on the most complex situations, and create efficiencies with the common ones. Atif Riaz: Oil and gas uses cameras for remote monitoring: detecting leaks, fires, or missing safety gear. And now, with software overlays, we don't need specialized cameras. Any video feed can become intelligent through use of AI software. Heather Orrico, Vice President, Comcast Business: How do you align with leadership on innovation and data security when there are competing priorities? Atif Riaz: I have learned to reframe digital and security initiatives in terms of exploration, production, or operational success. Once you link IT to business goals, alignment and funding follows. Randy Volkin: Reputation matters a lot at Perry Homes. But we also know there's no such thing as zero risk. Even the federal government gets breached. So we talk about making good, measured decisions rather than chasing everything shiny. You need to take calculated risks to progress any business but we won't make compromises with customer data or other matters that impact our reputation. Viet Dang: Our CEO is very much in tune with emerging technology and its adoption. He recognized the value of AI early on and established—and now chairs—our internal AI Governance Committee. We're focused on organization-wide implementation, encouraging our team to explore the best uses of AI, develop effective prompts, and understand how these tools can support their work. At the same time, we're committed to educating staff on responsible use and maximizing the benefits AI can offer. Jeff Baker, Chief Technology Officer, Socium Solutions: We always bring it back to opportunity cost. What's the ROI of this versus doing nothing? At a certain point, the next thing isn't worth the price. Traci Pelter, President & Publisher, Houston Business Journal: I'd love to hear a challenge or win from this year. Something that went wel l— or didn't. Atif Riaz: A few years ago, we made a very intentional decision to empower the business more—to encourage citizen development and give non-IT teams the tools and freedom to innovate. And it worked. More people started building solutions, bringing up ideas, and moving fast. This has been a big win for us. The challenge with democratizing technology, though, is that not everyone wants to follow the governance process. It's a double-edged sword. You want a technically literate business, but also want to make sure there's agreement for them to stay within the guardrails. Randy Volkin: Education will be reshaped. AI can personalize learning, give every student the exact input they need in ways that teachers can't. In one of my kid's university classes they had to use AI and show their work, keeping track of each prompt they used to get to the result. Another kid at a different university banned AI entirely. It's such a wild contrast Keith Tomshe: Copilot is useful, but it lags behind some other tools. That's part of the expectation gap. People think AI is magic. Casey Kiesewetter, Vice President, Houston Business Journal: What ripple effects are you seeing across your organization? Jeff Baker: We can respond to anomalies faster. Yesterday, we flagged a potential issue in real time. That kind of agility didn't exist a year ago. Ashok Kurian: We are exploring the use of natural language processing technology, which allows our clinicians to spend less time behind the computer, and more time with the patient. This also boosts provider satisfaction, as they are spending less time having to document, and more time with their families. Jeff Baker: Bias is a concern, but it's not unique to AI. It exists in human providers too. At least with AI, we can audit those biases and make better decisions. Heather Orrico, Vice President, Comcast Business: Fast forward 20 years: What does the balance between humans and AI look like? Keith Tomshe: I got a Tesla. The self-driving is amazing. I even talked to ChatGPT on the way here to prep for this conversation. It's part of my workflow now. Ashok Kurian: Artificial Intelligence has come a long way, but what's on the horizon is even more exciting. Innovations are being made today that will lead the world to potential Artificial General Intelligence, where AI will be able to learn on their own, with reasoning capabilities. The uses cases are endless, but we need to also ensure safety and protections with these new discoveries. Atif Riaz: Some estimates put Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) just 12 months away. That's AI smarter than the smartest human alive. Whether you believe that or not, the urgency is real. Heather Orrico, Vice President, Comcast Business: What does this mean for soft skills and people leadership in the future? Randy Volkin: Education will be reshaped. AI can personalize learning, give every student the exact input they need in ways that teachers can't. In one of my kid's university classes they had to use AI and show their work, keeping track of each prompt they used to get to the result. Another kid at a different university banned AI entirely. It's such a wild contrast. Jeff Baker: I teach a cybersecurity certificate course at UT. The best students aren't always the most technical. They're the ones who can communicate, think critically, and work without a prompt. I hope that skill set is still important in 20 years. Jeff Green: I hire for critical thinking, not credentials. We once hired an art major who couldn't use Excel, but she became our best business analyst because she was great at problem solving and critical thinking. She knew how to ask the right questions and interpret those answers to produce business outcomes. That is going to set you apart in the future of the job market. Atif Riaz: We see younger generation nowadays is losing social skills as they are glued to their devices. But if the argument is that robots will get more human-like, that means they'll want social interaction too. So relationships and social skills will still be paramount; that's how you 'get along' with AI. Moderators Panelists