It can be threatening if not downright scary sometimes to consider the extent to which apps and Artificial Intelligence now run our lives.

But it’s also exciting to think about all the ways that this technology can be used to cure diseases or build sophisticated satellite systems or even do simple things – like helping us do the laundry! Or training a new employee on how to do their job.

AI Laundry

Chris Hilliard is co-founder of Suds Laundry Service, a traditional laundry service with a distinctly 21st century twist: Suds has created a custom app that customers can use to schedule laundry pickup and delivery from their home, dorm or office along with any special instructions. Suds will launder or dry clean the clothes and return them within 24 hours.

Chris Hilliard, a dorm room filled with dirty laundry inspired an AI-driven laundry service and a career in clean clothes

Chris and his partners created the company in 2019, while they were still college students at Southern University in Baton Rouge,  looking for a solution to the piles of laundry building up in their dorm rooms. In the years since, they have graduated and grown their startup with help from the Southern University Law Centers’ Technology and Entrepreneur Clinic.

Chris grew up in Lafayette and now calls Baton Rouge home.

AI Hires & Trains

David DeCuir is a partner in iCan Technologies, which provides software tools to help companies effectively train and track the competency of their employees and contractors, which is no small thing for the industrial and energy companies that David’s company works with.

iCan also recently developed an AI technology that helps companies create scripts for job interviews, offering an interviewer specific real-time questions and prompts based on how an applicant is responding. Think about that for a moment!

David DeCuir, his cost-cutting innovations in the oil and gas indistry led to his pioneering AI-driven training and HR tools

David co-founded the company in early 2020 – literally weeks before COVID changed everything, in his case for the better. He didn’t start out looking to create a tech startup but had spent years working in the oil and gas industry and realized there was an opportunity to do things better.

David also is a native of Lafayette.

Chris Hilliard, Stephanie Riegel, David DeCuir, Out to Lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard.