Behind the scenes in Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Ido Efrati is helping shape how AI gets adopted. He does so by starting not with the technology, but with the people and problems it might serve.
In practice, that means sitting down with a person or team and asking them to walk him through their day: where they hesitate, where they repeat themselves, where something feels harder than it should be.
“What matters first is learning their world,” said the programmer analyst. Only after he understands their workflows and roadblocks can he begin a conversation about potential solutions – AI-focused or not.
To dig into that institutional experience, he’s been developing a structured approach to AI discovery, including an intake process with questions designed to reveal the problems, bottlenecks, and judgment calls already in place.
