Artificial intelligence agents have the knowledge of a thousand master’s degrees – Seinäjoki wants to bring 100,000 AI agents to businesses in the region

Seinäjoki is looking to AI to solve the region’s skills shortages, low education levels and slow productivity growth. In micro- and small businesses, an AI agent can spar with the owner by taking on the role of a government professional or software developer, for example. This frees up the owner’s time for meeting people, selling and planning.

There is no lack of enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit in South Ostrobothnia. When they lacked a lake, they dug one. At the same time, the problem of a missing hill was solved when surplus soil was used to raise Jouppilanvuori.

Education levels and labour productivity are, however, lagging behind. The region is investing, but labour productivity is not increasing at the same rate. There is also a shortage of skilled labour in companies in the region.

Now Seinäjoki is looking to artificial intelligence to solve the problem. The recently launched AI-BASS (AI-Based Support of Startup Companies) project at the Seinäjoki unit of Tampere University aims to contribute to the goal of bringing 100,000 language-based AI tools, or AI agents, to micro- and small businesses in the region.

The project is part of Seinäjoki’s innovation ecosystem, which aims to strengthen the region’s RDI activities and encourage companies to internationalise. The city will contribute to this by supporting the sustainability of the food sector and smart industry, to which AI agents will be linked. The city’s business development company, Into Seinäjoki Oy, is the driving force behind the project.

“We activate companies and the RDI field to meet each other. I myself have been sparring the AI-BASS project application and feeding the project with companies to contact,” says Into Seinäjoki’s specialist in startup and innovation actions, Piia-Marika Jokela.

The first AI agents are already serving businesses in the region, and now thousands more are to be created. What is the point of AI agents and why are they not yet found in every company in Seinäjoki?

AI agents have the knowledge of a thousand master’s degrees

The AI-BASS project is based on the GPT-Lab research group at Tampere University, led by Professor Pekka Abrahamsson. GPT-Lab explores applications of generative AI, in particular in the software sector. With 35 members, it is the largest research group on the subject in the Nordic countries.

AI-BASS, coordinated by the Seinäjoki University Centre, will put GPT-Lab’s research into practice and into the service of local companies.

“Professor Abrahamsson has promised 10,000 AI agents for Satakunta. We in South Ostrobothnia are going to do better and bring 100,000 of them to businesses!” says Jussi Rasku, a doctoral researcher at Tampere University.

The AI-BASS project was inspired by Rasku’s and project leader Mikko Auranen‘s observation that small startups and tech companies often struggle with cash flow and thus with executing their strategy.

Companies do often come up with good plans. However, entrepreneurs struggling with financial pressures may take on assignments that do not take the company in the direction it had planned.

This is when an AI agent should enter the picture. An AI agent is a tool built on a language model with freer virtual hands than chat-based AI. It can make changes to files, write text and code, develop tools, search the web for information – whatever it takes to complete the task at hand.

When AI is given sufficient understanding of the business environment, it can, for example, tell you whether a decision will take the business in the direction of its strategy or away from it.

“Management by knowledge often gets bogged down in the fact that people do not know what’s possible. Suddenly, thanks to artificial intelligence, you have a tool with the knowledge of a thousand master’s degrees. It may not be as good as the best one or a specialist, but it knows enough and can highlight issues that would otherwise go unnoticed,” says Rasku.

Don’t just tell, show

There is already ample evidence of the benefits of AI agents. For example, in consulting work, according to a study by Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania School of Business AI assistants can speed up work by 25% and improve work outcomes by up to 40% when evaluated against precise quality criteria. In his dissertation, Rasku proved that AI can help logistics companies make their transport operations significantly more efficient, which also saves the environment.

AI agents are built from bits, so there is no limit to how many of them can be replicated. The barriers to the deployment of AI agents are therefore mainly encoded between people’s ears.

Business owners are particularly concerned about how much time or other resources they need to spend on implementing AI tools. Rasku has been going around showing them hands-on how easy it is to use the tools and how useful they are. That’s when attitudes often change.

“I’m sure that even the inventor of accounting in Renaissance Italy had to show a few times how to use it and what the benefits were,” laughs Rasku.

Another bottleneck in the adoption of AI is the fear that data fed into it will be leaked into hostile hands. However, the language models developed in the AI-BASS project and the data fed into them will remain strictly within the walls of the university centre, assures Rasku.

Aiming to be the world’s most supportive business city

Seinäjoki wants to be the most supportive business city in the world. This objective could also be prominent in AI agents developed for businesses in the region

“In my work, I find that business owners need peer support with whom they can openly share their pain points. AI agents could encourage business owners to encourage others,” says Piia-Marika Jokela.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of potential partners in the region. Another important partner for AI-BASS is Skaalaamo, a business growth programme run by Into Seinäjoki. There are also opportunities for cooperation with the MOI Hub project at Tampere University, which is developing the Internet of Things, not forgetting the Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences (SeAMK), which provides engineering education.

The aim in Seinäjoki is to develop an entire #yrittäjyystekoälyklusteri (entrepreneurial AI cluster) in the region, which will help businesses in the area to build smart green growth. This will boost the development of both the city and businesses in the region.

“Once AI has been let loose on the world, it can’t be put back in the bottle. My crystal ball shows that the AI is only going to become more important, as it becomes more capable than humans in different tasks. We will then need to think about what is important to us as people,” says Rasku.

Although a lot of effort is being put into artificial intelligence in Seinäjoki, the ordinary Seinäjoki people will not be forgotten.

“Our vision is to free up time for the ordinary business owner in Seinäjoki to pursue business growth, meet customers face-to-face, sell and create networks,” says Jokela.

AI agents may have the knowledge of a thousand master’s degrees, but they are no substitute for human beings, guts and enterprise. The division of roles is clear: business owners set the course and AI agents help keep it on track. Time will tell what kind of mountains the hard-working people of South Ostrobothnia will move – or build – with the help of artificial intelligence!

Seinäjoki is one of the cities in the Innokaupunki network. Smart green growth has been at the forefront of the city’s innovation development. Sustainable food system renewal and smart industrial renewal are the priorities for development at the strategic level.