Dr. Anthony Phillips
Fox Valley Initiative (FVI) held its monthly public forum on October 6, 2025 at Freedom Project Academy in Appleton, hosting Rich Lukas, Professor of Engineering at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), and Assembly Representative Nate Gustafson, Chair of the Committee on Science, Technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Prof. Lukas gave a PowerPoint presentation about the history of computers and AI, noting that today more data is created every day than all the combined data prior to the year 2000. AI can translate languages in real time, drive vehicles, and improve medical care in underserved rural areas by reading X rays and offering personalized treatment. Prof. Lukas said the increasing use of AI in the medical field promises to deliver “lower costs and better outcomes” for patients.
The pitfalls of AI—such as obtaining personal information and creating deepfakes—were reviewed, and methods of protecting one’s privacy were discussed. For example, Prof. Lukas encouraged those using iPhones to “disable analytics sharing” and use a VPN (virtual private network) when banking online. Prof. Lukas also said that AI is “stupid—it doesn’t have ethics.” He said, for example, that an autonomous (self-driving) car facing two obstacles in the road—a small child and a large dog—would swerve to avoid the dog and would hit the child, because AI responds only to the size of the obstacle and cannot make value judgments about the obstacles.
Rep. Gustafson addressed workforce concerns raised by AI, explaining that AI will not replace people but can take over jobs for which it is hard to recruit humans. He noted AI is not perfect and will always require humans to filter information; he called that “humans in the loop.” He said “AI can get you 90 percent of the way, but you need a human being to do the final 10 percent of the job.”
As an example, Rep. Gustafson explained how he asked AI to review 1,600 pages of IT contracts for the state of Wisconsin, looking for cost over-runs, missing vendors, and projects that didn’t get completed. The AI was able to distill the important information in minutes—but the AI’s summary needed to be double-checked by humans to make sure it was accurate.
Rep. Gustafson and Prof. Lukas agreed AI requires massive data centers and massive amounts of energy. Prof. Lukas said 5 percent of all the world’s energy is currently used by AI. Rep. Gustafson said Microsoft is building the world’s largest data center in SE Wisconsin, and he reviewed the state’s response to these energy needs, including an expected resurgence of nuclear power, both large plants such as at Kewaunee and small, modular plants. He said Wisconsin will be at the forefront of jobs-providing innovations in data centers, AI, and energy production.
During Q&A, Rep. Gustafson pointed out that President Trump is supportive of American innovation in AI. On September 30, the president signed an Executive Order urging the use of AI to speed up research on pediatric cancers. In July, he signed three Executive Orders removing federal regulatory barriers to the construction of data centers. Rep. Gustafson also warned that we are currently in a modern “space race” with China on the use of AI—companies are coming to the U.S., using our resources and data to train their AI, and then exporting that AI model to foreign countries. While we in the U.S. develop our AI with “guardrails” to prevent abuse of AI, the companies exporting AI models to other countries can strip out the guardrails, making those foreign AI models more of a danger to our privacy and more susceptible to interference from government.
Dr. Richard Lukas’s Power Point presentation is available at foxvalleyinitiative.com
About Fox Valley Initiative
FVI recently received its 501(c)(4) status from the IRS and is changing its name to Fox Valley Conservatives (FVC). The mission of FVC is to inform and activate the voting public.
The next meeting of the Fox Valley Initiative will be held on Monday, Dec. 1st at Freedom Project Academy, 750 N. Hickory Farm Lane, Appleton. It starts at 6:30pm. The topic is, 2026 Election Preview. We expect that one of the Republican candidates for WI Governor will be speaking and also one of local Republican State Senators will speak.
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