The Swedish American Chamber of Commerce-Minnesota (SACC-MN) hosted the event “AI Now: From Generative Hype to Real World Impact!” on Wednesday, February 25, 2026, at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.
The Swedish American Chamber of Commerce-Minnesota brought three engaging speakers to the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis this week to discuss how AI is being used in real-world business environments, considerations of ethical use, and what its future capabilities may look like.
Quinton Krueger, Director of AI-Enabled Operations at Minnesota-based 3M, provided an overview of the challenges manufacturers face when integrating AI into production processes. Krueger said that 87 percent of manufacturers have an active GenAI (Generative AI) pilot involving an LLM (Large Language Model) but that less than 30 percent of AI pilots ever reach full production deployment. He said, however, that over 80 percent of AI failures in manufacturing result from organizational factors, not technical limitations. As Krueger stated in his presentation, “AI is a leadership problem, not a technology problem.”
Minneapolis-based Author and Speaker Dr. Elizabeth M. Adams, whose expertise focuses on the intersection of AI, leadership, and humanity, gave the second presentation. Dr. Adams’ talk focused on the ethical considerations of adopting AI. Dr. Adams emphasized the protection of people’s dignity, privacy and fairness when adopting AI to bring about alignment between the technology and how humans should be using it. With those purposes in mind, Dr. Adams presented the concept of “Responsible AI,” whereby the design, development and deployment of AI are guided by ethical principles at the outset of the project. Paraphrasing the title of her presentation, Dr. Adams said it is paramount to “choose purpose before code.”
Dr. Toby J. Velte, a faculty member of both Oxford University and the London Business School, gave the third and final presentation. Dr. Velte described three types of AI: Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI).
ANI is the type of AI that is familiar to most general users, where the task is single and well-defined. Dr. Velte gave examples of chatbots, recommendation engines, and image generators as ANI. In contrast to ANI, AGI is a more advanced level of AI that functions as the full equivalent of a human brain, able to “understand, learn, and solve problems across domains the way a human can.”
ASI is the AI of the future. Although not yet realized, Dr. Velte said ASI would be “super-human across the board” and “could invent new sciences, solve currently intractable problems, and improve its own architecture without human intervention.” Dr. Velte touched on ASI as the area of AI where popular apocalyptic visions come into play, where AI is capable of following its own interests without regard to human values or its impact on humanity itself. Dr. Velte indicated that expert opinion on such dystopian sci-fi movie scenarios becoming reality range from “not possible” to much more disturbing forecasts of relative certainty.
Carl-Johan Torarp, who is the Founder and CEO of LocaLoop, Inc. and an SACC-MN Board Member, lead a panel Q&A session with the three speakers at the end of the presentations.
Connect