Brian Gamble (left), Michael Rogers (center), Robert D. Rosenthal (left)
First Long Island Investors, LLC recently welcomed Michael Rogers, senior staff editor at The New York Times, as the featured guest for our Thought Leadership Breakfast at The Garden City Hotel on May 16, 2025. Rogers, a veteran journalist and author, recently completed two years as the futurist-in-residence for The New York Times and is also a columnist for NBC.com. He led an engaging discussion on “The Unstoppable Rise of AI”, exploring its wide-ranging impacts on business, health, and society.
Rogers opened by mapping out today’s artificial intelligence (AI) landscape, noting the explosive growth of generative AI technologies since ChatGPT’s public debut in November 2022. While AI has been in development for decades, he argued, it has now reached a true inflection point and is touching nearly every part of the economy.
Tracing the history of AI from its academic origins to the present, Rogers explained how neural networks, deep learning, and the use of vast datasets (like those powering ChatGPT) are fundamentally reshaping industries. He offered examples such as seismology, where neural networks now help identify earthquakes with over 98% accuracy.
A central theme of Rogers’s talk was that AI is unlike any previous technology. AI improves as it scales, is already woven into everyday life, and is advancing faster than past innovations. Despite its longstanding roots, the recent surge in applications—from customer service to healthcare diagnostics—has brought new and pressing challenges around ethics, regulation, and workforce adaptation.
Humanoid robots, AI medical assistants, and even AI-generated TV scripts and music are now realities. In radiology, Rogers highlighted, AI is being used to assist (but not replace) doctors in reading X-rays. In the business world, companies like Amazon.com are using AI to run warehouses more efficiently, with robots operating at a cost of just $10 per hour. Robots can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without taking any vacation or sick time.
Rogers also addressed the risks and limitations of AI, including issues with the accuracy of AI-generated content, the rise of deepfakes, algorithmic bias, and the spread of misinformation. He warned against assuming AI’s answers are always reliable, noting that AI can sound confident while being wrong. He also stressed that while AI can boost productivity, it still lacks essential human qualities like empathy, contextual understanding, and creativity.
To close, Rogers urged leaders to focus on the “3 Cs” that AI cannot emulate: empathetic communication, collaboration, and creative problem-solving. These distinctly human skills, he said, will be crucial as society adapts to an AI-driven world.
FLI remains committed to offering clients timely insights from top industry experts and thought leaders through the FLI Thought Leadership Breakfast series. We thank Michael Rogers for sharing his perspective and expertise on the topic of AI.