Terrifying threats. Unprecedented opportunities. Change at the speed of a microprocessor. Across the country — and here in Charleston — that’s how experts are talking about the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence, or AI.
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Driving that conversation, they say, are technological breakthroughs that have placed generative AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, in the hands of people and businesses across the world over the past three years.
But amid sensational headlines and breathless predictions of super-intelligent machines, governments, businesses and even everyday citizens are scrambling to prepare for — something. Even experts struggle to say exactly what.
As Charleston City Paper learned in a series of recent interviews, the Lowcountry’s digital harbor — and South Carolina — is no exception.
Charlestonians work to understand, prepare
While government officials work to formulate reasonable policies in Washington and Columbia, Charleston-area business owners, professionals and academics are already navigating AI’s real-world impacts.
Mount Pleasant attorney and digital forensics examiner Steve Abrams told the City Paper that AI is already reshaping day-to-day legal work.
“It basically does what a clerk would do,” Abrams said. “If you had a practice with a big enough system to support a law clerk, you’d send them for a couple of days to [prepare a] legal memorandum, and here the AI tool does it in about five minutes.”
But with the ongoing issue of AI “hallucinations” — put simply, made-up facts that popular chatbots sometimes invent out of whole cloth — Abrams noted that it’s not a “set it and forget it” solution. Lawyers need to carefully review every AI-generated document they intend to present.
Less excited about the technology is Jonathan Boncek, a former City Paper photographer who’s watching the rise of AI with concern for his freelance business.
“Clients might not want to spend their money to pay me, when they can just do some AI generative fill-in,” Boncek said. “While it’s not massive yet, I do understand how AI is [moving] really quickly. So I’m just trying to prepare myself for what could be next.”
To that end, Boncek said he’s become a certified rapid transformational therapist — if not directly because of AI, at least with a wary eye cast in that direction.
“I’ve moved into a space that I believe AI won’t be able to touch, which is that human interaction and mental health space,” Boncek said. “I don’t think that AI is going to be able to help with mental health.”
On the academic side, College of Charleston Associate Professor of Literacy Education Ian O’Byrne said he encourages students to use AI as a “cognitive amplifier” for tasks such as organizing their work and sorting out the most important parts of lectures.
“Our students are busy, they have a lot going on in their lives,” he said. “If I can do something to help them out a little bit, I will.”
As for academic research that some say raises concerns about the technology, such as a recent MIT study showing that using ChatGPT significantly reduces brain activity, O’Byrne is skeptical.
“We’re already starting to see the ‘Is AI making us dumber?’ argument come around — this is to be ignored,” he said. “We fought that battle 20 years ago when we were [being told that] Google was making us dumber.”
A statewide strategy: Opportunity with guardrails
At a March 24 AI event sponsored by the nonprofit S.C. Council on Competitiveness, Beaufort County Republican Rep. Jeff Bradley, chair of the House Regulations, Administrative Procedures, Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity Committee, talked up the state’s efforts to get government, business and educational institutions pulling in the same direction on AI.
“This collaborative effort marks a pivotal moment in our state’s technological advancement,” Bradley told attendees. “By leveraging our research institutions and fostering cross-sector collaboration, we can drive applied AI innovation, train and retain a competitive AI workforce, and position South Carolina as AI-ready.”
That effort produced its first tangible result in March 2024, when the S.C. Department of Administration (Admin) released its AI Strategy, which aims to promote and responsibly regulate the use of AI in the delivery of state government services.
At the time, Admin spokesperson Brooke Bailey told the City Paper that safety, not speed, would be the agency’s goal as it moved forward. This week, she said Admin is currently tracking 29 proposed use-cases for AI from various agencies, ranging from internal chatbots and image-recognition tools to off-the-shelf software.
“Admin reviews each use case for security, risk, potential benefit and efficiencies, and continuously collaborates and engages with agencies as they implement approved use cases,” Bailey said.
What’s more, she says, the agency has established a Center of Excellence to provide oversight and governance to state agencies using AI, with subgroups focused on risk, compliance and procurement.
“Additionally, the agency is seeking to initiate statewide pilot programs … for ChatGPT and Microsoft Co-pilot,” she said.
Legislative initiatives: Protecting progress, people
Lawmakers say they’ve focused early AI legislation on keeping South Carolina business- and consumer-friendly, while cracking down on predators who misuse the technology — an approach Gov. Henry McMaster has lauded.
In particular, he cited the importance of recent legislation to protect minors from AI-enabled abuse in a May social media post.
“I’ve signed two bills into law that combat the creation, possession, and distribution of AI-generated child sexual abuse material,” McMaster said. “These laws will give prosecutors the tools they need to go after predators who use technology to harm and exploit our children.”
Protecting people from AI risk will also be the top priority of the S.C. House AI Regulations subcommittee when it begins meeting next year, according to Chairman Brandon Guffey, R-York. In 2022, Guffey lost his 17-year-old son to suicide after he was victimized by an online predator’s scam.
“The last thing we want to do is stifle innovation,” Guffey said in a June 18 interview. “But we have to be quick to react [to new developments] to ensure we’re protecting people.”
That’s why he’s carefully watching proposed federal legislation that would prevent states from regulating AI for the next 10 years, he said.
“I don’t believe the federal government has any right to tell us we can’t protect our citizens,” he said. “But if the goal is to keep states from stifling a specific industry, then yeah, I would agree states should not have that right.”
Looking ahead to 2026, Guffey said he wants to begin with a bill aimed at preventing companies from exploiting people’s personal information or likeness using AI.
“One of my primary goals is to make sure that people aren’t profiting off your voice or your image just because it’s [generated by] AI,” he said.
Beyond that, he said, he’d like to see a shift in the way AI is understood and regulated.
“Ultimately, I believe if we simply started looking at technology and the tech industry as products instead of services, then a lot of this stuff could be handled through [existing] consumer protection laws,” he said.
Charleston: ‘A big role to play’
Back in the Lowcountry, attorney Steve Britt, who serves as general counsel for the National Artificial Intelligence Association, says Charleston tech leaders are already ahead of the game when it comes to integrating AI into their operations.
“Charleston’s got a big role to play, and I think they’re approaching it the right way,” he told the City Paper in an interview last week.
But like Guffey, he worries about any effort to preempt state laws on the federal level.
“It’s not a very elegant solution, and it’ll be very difficult for Congress to enact,” Britt said. “We hope they move forward to a federal law on data privacy and AI [instead].”
Meanwhile, the College of Charleston’s O’Byrne is worried about overreaction as well.
“I feel like we fall into this trap of hyperbole and hysteria,” he said this week. “And I think a lot of the time, people don’t even understand what AI even is.”
Every day, and at every level, South Carolinians are working to close that AI understanding gap. And maybe, in the process, making the conversation just a little more grounded — and a little less breathless.
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