This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with returning guest Nick Myers, CEO and co-founder of RedFox AI.
Myers provides an update on the Madison-based software company, which has refocused its efforts in a new direction this year after getting industry feedback.
“In our case, you start your business bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, thinking that you have the world figured out, and then your solution you built to a specific problem is everything,” he said. “And then through trial and error, and conversation, learning and failures, you realize ‘oh, well maybe there’s a different path ahead for us.’”
After initially focusing on supporting at-home lab testing and medical devices with its AI platform, the company has shifted to prioritize training and continuing education for medical devices. The pivot was prompted by larger companies reaching out to express a need for a medical device training AI system.
“And at the time, being so engrossed in the initial vision that I had, right, I turned them down … Now we’ve really embraced a lot of that feedback and have repositioned,” Myers said.
The podcast explores some of the latest trends in the AI industry, noting more widespread adoption of the technology by businesses shows it’s having a real impact by saving time for employees. He expects that trend will continue into the future, but adds “we are seeing a bit of a plateau” in use cases for consumer-side generative AI tools.
While these tools are great at consolidating information and following a prompt, Myers notes the technology still lacks agency.
“It’s not like I can go to ChatGPT and be like, ‘here’s a trip I want to take out to Morocco, book me a hotel, book me a flight.’ You know, it can’t do stuff like that yet,” he said. “Undoubtedly, it will at some point but we’re not there right now.”
Myers also touches on his plans to continue legislative advocacy going into 2025, focused on AI policy in Wisconsin. He said “now is the time to really take a hard look” at the technology and advance policies that support innovation while addressing concerns around data privacy, AI safety and more.
“We need to mitigate a lot of those risks now while we’re still early on,” he said.
Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison:
