Affordable AI Brings 24/7 Compliance to a Veteran-Owned Business

Angel Rodriguez, Founder and Owner, Alliance Training and Testing | Nashville, TN

I’m a 101st Airborne veteran with over 30 years’ experience in security and military operations. In 2012, I started a security-guard training and certification company, Alliance Training and Testing, in Nashville, Tennessee. We quickly became one of the state’s most popular training schools, and have educated thousands of responsible, effective security professionals. 

Security training is a closely regulated industry. Students are required to complete state-mandated coursework, and trainers like me have to be able to verify students’ completion and mastery of that coursework. We’re routinely audited for safety and compliance. If we certify an untrained guard, or if any of our information is incorrect, we face serious legal liabilities. 

For years, I personally monitored students’ attendance, graded their certification exams, and verified their identities. Doing that work manually was labor-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to human error — and it kept me on call 24 hours a day. It was also a bottleneck that prevented me from scaling my business. I wanted to automate the work, but I couldn’t find digital tools that met my standard: 100% safety, reliability, and data-security.

AI provided me with those tools. Early in 2025, I used Google’s top-tier consumer AI technology, Gemini Ultra, to build an AI-powered learning management system (LMS) for Alliance. Students overwhelmingly take our courses online — and they do so at all hours. I needed a system, including an AI “agent,” that could reliably answer their questions, verify their identities, and proctor their exams — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Gemini Ultra allowed me to create an LMS that could handle all those critically important tasks. 

Next, in order to keep my students’ data safe and ensure they couldn’t use AI to cheat on their exams, I created an AI-powered fortification around my LMS. Essentially, the fortification lets me keep the AI I want in, and AI I don’t want out. The net result is a highly secure AI-powered LMS that’s far more reliable than a human proctor — allowing me to offer 24/7 training, testing, and certification without hiring 24/7 staff. It’s important to note that I’m not a coder or software engineer. Gemini did all the coding; over several months, I led the coding process by continuously refining my prompts and scrupulously testing the resulting fortification to ensure 100% security.

AI has changed my life. The system I built gives me clear, comprehensive records of every safety check, which makes state audits painless. And I’m not stuck in the weeds grading exams and answering questions. AI has given me the time I need to focus on growing my business, the capacity to responsibly do so, and, as it turns out, the capacity to launch a new defense-tech business (see box below).

Lawmakers need to understand that affordable AI is the only way small businesses like mine can stay competitive in highly regulated industries. Often, compliance is so expensive and complicated that it requires teams of lawyers and engineers. Big companies can afford that kind of expertise, but small businesses can’t. AI gives us the leverage we need to comply, compete, and succeed — safely.