Businessmen and AI experts came to Sheffield for Tech Week 2025, to explore the uses of AI technology in business and robotics and how its uses could increase efficiency in our everyday lives.
Event organisers Sheffield.AI gave the floor to speakers to present their ideas in front of dozens of people.
Andrew Longhorn, who pioneered the event, spoke about how small and medium sized enterprises could integrate AI into their workday to increase productivity, whilst protecting jobs and opening complex uses to managements without coding skills.
Andrew said: “I am now building systems for businesses to leverage AI because of the increase in productivity that I have gained from it. As a developer being able to sell big digital systems to businesses in Sheffield and being to deliver them as six month long projects, I wouldn’t be able to do it without AI.”
Software engineer Laurence Brown spoke about what he thought about the uses of AI in the workplace.
He said: “It’s understandable that people think that AI will take over jobs but I think AI is more of a tool for work instead of a replacement for it.
“It’s like when calculators were invented, it didn’t replace mathematicians it just made their lives easier.”
The graph above outlines the trend in the uses of AI, with studies predicting that a total of 378 million people will be using AI in the workplace by the end of 2025.
Andrew added: “I’d argue there are merits in people being worried about AI, however people that build AI systems have a duty to ensure there are limits and guardrails.”
“You shouldn’t be able to make money from a product that can do harm when all someone has invested in it its use for productivity.”
Alex Kelly, an AI specialist in robotics, demonstrated how 3D printable robotics could be trained on AI language models to do simple tasks around the house, such as folding clothes or even cooking food.
He said the commodification of AI and robotic technology, has lowered the price point and skill level to get into robotics and could lead to the tech being featured in homes in the future.
The increase in uses of AI technology has steadily increased since the site ChatGPT was released in November 2022.