Karen Kistler
karen.kistler@salisburypost.com
SALISBURY — Artificial intelligence was the focus of the November Rowan County Chamber of Commerce’s Power in Partnership breakfast, held at Trinity Oaks in Salisbury.
The program featured a presentation by Dr. Lane Freeman, a nationally recognized expert in AI and education. Having been in education for 25 years, Freeman taught for 12 years at the high school level before transitioning to the community college. He serves as the state director of Online Learning for the North Carolina Community College System.
Freeman bragged on Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, which was the event sponsor, as he said they have a good jewel here, and it seems they have a great way of embracing AI.
There are some well-founded fears with AI, he said, and therefore he likes to show fun ways it can be used. Sharing the example of a car that can be used as a getaway vehicle from a robbery or used to travel, Freeman said AI is the same. It can be used to do bad things or used for good.
During his presentation, he shared examples of what individuals can do with AI and said there is an expectation in the workforce that graduates know how to use it, “and so when you get to a workspace, knowing how to use it is important.”
Creating images, he said, is fun and can be used in lots of ways, noting he used AI to create every image in his presentation.
He showed multiple generated photos of himself and his family including one of his mom taken in 1957 that he had uploaded, had it colorized and asked AI to make it look as though it had been taken with a digital camera in 2025 and then had it animated where he could see her walking as a young child.
“This is a really cool trick to try,” he said.
Freeman said some are afraid to use AI, but said it’s easy to do and if one can work with Google, then you can also work with AI.
“I think the best way to think about AI when you work with it,” he said, “is as an administrative assistant.”
And therefore when he does presentations, he will type up a script and then have his assistant, which he named Jen, create a PowerPoint presentation.
He introduced Jen to the crowd and had her introduce herself, and then demonstrated how she could translate what was said to multiple languages and answer questions.
Stressing the need to fact check AI, Freeman said it’s smart, but direction and context are important.
He further showed this when he asked how many r’s are in the word strawberry and her answer was two.
“It’s very smart but sometimes it gets things wrong. You always need to be fact checking what AI tells you,” said Freeman. “Just because AI tells you something doesn’t mean it’s true. That’s part of that critical thinking, problem solving skill that we have to work and I think that probably provides an opportunity to get students to critically think, to question what they are given to make sure that they actually understand the concepts.”
Additional features included a storybook he created with Gemini, and one of his favorite tools, he said, is Google Veo 3, which creates videos with prompts.
AI-generated songs through Suno were demonstrated as Freeman had created several songs specifically for the chamber event. These included a country, gospel and bluegrass version of songs titled “Rowan Chamber Fan That Flame” and “Thank God for the Rowan Chamber,” which brought cheers from the audience
Freeman said they could use this to come up with jingles for their businesses.
As for educational uses, he said one of the most impactful things he had seen is NotebookLM, which allows the user to take notes and creates a video presentation of those notes with flashcards and quiz questions.
In addition to AI being used for fun and in education, he said it’s having an impact on the workforce,
When they work with small businesses, Freeman said they offer workshops on AI and added that community colleges offer a continuing education course, an AI survey course. He has trained people to use AI in specific areas including courses in paralegal and medical, “and I know our colleges are ready to prepare.”
As for the impact it will have on the workforce, Freeman said he didn’t see it eliminating jobs but he did see it reducing some of those jobs.
“I see people are going to go into different areas in that sector because AI cannot complete the entire career field,” he said. “It’s really good at tasks. It’s not necessarily good at just an entire job.”
Noting an example of doing something writing intensive, he said AI could help with it, but it’s not going to do everything as he said to consider the personal interaction one has with people.
A task done with Gen AI can be completed faster as he noted on a chart that one which would take 115 minutes typically takes 30-35 minutes with AI.
Therefore, he said, “you can see that the better you get at using AI, the more you can produce,” and as in the example of nurses, they could spend more time with their patients rather than sitting at a computer inputting information.
In the healthcare field, Freeman said there would be a big impact as AI can read MRIs and x-rays, but he still wants a human looking at it as well.
However this technology is used, Freeman said one thing that is important to use is what he calls the AI sandwich, which means “the human comes first, then we invite AI, and then we wrap up with a human again.”
He said the better the user knows their content, the better they can prompt it and offered tips on doing this including giving instructions, providing context on the project, giving details of how you want it to look and sharing examples.
Also during the event, Dr. Carol Spalding, president of RCCC addressed the crowd and shared a proclamation, to “recognize and celebrate the partnership between the Rowan County Chamber of Commerce and RCCC whose shared vision and collaborative efforts continue to uplift our students, strengthen our workforce and lift up the community.”
