Abel Meri wants to make life easier for his business clients, but at what cost?
Meri is CEO of the Old Town-based Notice Enterprises, an automation company he founded in 2019. Notice has seen exponential growth over the last few years by using artificial intelligence to revolutionize how small businesses manage nearly every aspect of their workflows, from AI receptionists to the composition of lengthy legal documents.
However, without a comprehensive federal law for AI regulation, Meri told ALXnow workers across all sectors will bear the brunt of these innovations by largely finding themselves out of work.
“AI is gonna have this seismic impact across sectors,” Meri said. “There’s no geographical limit to this. It’s gonna be everywhere we ship jobs.”
Meri’s team aims to leverage technology to create more efficient businesses. Right now, they are contending with a demand vacuum of clientele who want to adapt to AI’s innovations.
ALXnow: What kind of services do you offer?
Meri: It’s everything, from call intake agents that can basically replace the need for a receptionist, that can answer questions and convert sales, and send information to customers, to sales automation, customer relationship nurturing, and social media posting. Literally anything that is a friction point in your business that requires a lot of human resources and capital to do, there’s a way to automate that part of your business.
ALXnow: What kind of companies do you work with?
Meri: The legal space is great, just because it’s a very human resources-heavy industry. For law firms, where you can create your writing style for briefs and for demand letters, and these things that are super time-consuming for lawyers to do and create … Now you don’t need the associates that you’re paying $200 an hour to drag their feet and bill you for 10 hours to do something that the automation can do in five minutes.
We’re also in the logistics space. My dad’s business was a shipping company, and logistics is the backbone of a lot of commerce. It’s been an industry that has been really slow to adapt to technology and to really tap into it. That’s another space that we’re focused on — helping supply chain companies use automation and AI and data processing to be able to reduce mistakes, increase efficiency, create transparency between customers, and then just services, like business services, professional services.
We have a structural engineering company for which we built a system that, if any customer calls, is able to answer all of their questions. It’s able to schedule inspections, it’s able to send follow-up emails and respond to customer inquiries, and it’s freed up the business owner and actually eliminated the need for a lot of the headcount of staff to do their administrative day-to-day work.
ALXnow: Is it easier to get clients now that AI is more mainstream?
Meri: Oh my God, yeah. It’s a lot easier to sell. For us, their awareness of AI has now made them be actively on the lookout for people that can help them. Before, we’d be going into these businesses and you’re trying to tell them that there’s a problem and convincing them that there’s a problem that you can solve.
ALXnow: But now it’s not a debate with a potential customer?
Meri: They’re aware of the problem, so now it becomes more consultative, so you’re not trying to convince them. They know what they need, but not exactly how it connects with my business.
ALXnow: What are the unintended consequences of these companies using AI?
Meri: There’s a displacement of human resources that AI is gonna undoubtedly do, and is already doing … AI has the ability to literally displace entire segments of business and the workforce, and I don’t think anybody has figured out what happens to all of these people who have jobs, who were able to earn a living and support a family.
ALXnow: Like clerks at the grocery store and bank tellers?
Meri: Right. Technology used to be measured in five years, 10 years; now it’s six months, three months. Things are changing, so there’s not enough time to plan out how to transition these people who are now going to be displaced. Is there a place for them? Can we retrain them? Can we make them support the building or the maintenance of this technology?
ALXnow: What does the future look like?
Meri: If you look at the masthead of a business today, or if you look at the organizational chart, you’ll see people, marketing, accounting, support, customer service, and associates. I think you fast forward to a time where they’re not people’s photos, there’s the name of the Agentic AI tool that that company is implementing.
ALXnow: Sounds like a lot of layoffs, doesn’t it?
Meri: The cliff is a lot closer than we think it is. AI is gonna have this seismic impact across sectors. There’s no geographical limit to this. It’s gonna be everywhere we ship jobs. Why pay $30 an hour to somebody in Ohio when you can pay $3 an hour to somebody in India right now? Those are not even gonna be there. Why pay $3 for somebody in India when you can just pay a machine that’s there 24 hours a day? You don’t have to worry about FICA, health insurance, HR issues, and people calling in sick or taking maternity leave.
I remember the first time I saw a self-checkout at the grocery store. I was like, “I don’t work here. Like, give me my apron and my name tag as well if you want me to check myself out.” But look how we’ve shifted unconsciously over time. Now, I literally always go to the self checkout … What happens to all of those people at all of those companies that get displaced in the workforce? … That’s kind of the thing I don’t think anybody has figured out. I think that it needs to be something that is more talked about right now.
ALXnow: Have you asked ChatGPT about the future of humanity?
Meri: It’s really dark. Remember “Terminator”? Skynet? Yeah, that’s a worst-case, ominous kind of foreshadowing. There’s really no regulation right now, right? I think that will be problematic, and I feel conflicted because I’m like, “Hey, man, I’m on the selling side of this, so I really don’t want a lot of like regulation in this space.” But this cannot be unregulated, because if this falls into the wrong hands, and at the pace and at the rate at which this is evolving and expanding, this could be like a really, really bad movie at the end.
ALXnow: What advice do you have for high school graduates?
Meri: There is a unique value that each of us can bring to the world. I would encourage people to find that value and make that their career, whatever that is. If you love something, you’ll do it long enough to become great at it. Find what you love, find your unique value, and if you pursue that, you’ve already attained success. At that point, you’re doing what you love, that only you can do, right? In my measure, that is success.
