A glimpse at the ‘human-machine partnership’
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Lots has been said about the ways in which artificial intelligence may augment employees’ work. But first, local governments will need to successfully manage the learning curve.
When Tempe, Arizona, released its policy last year on the ethical use of artificial intelligence, a striking sentence within its pages turned heads.
The policy said that the city of Tempe would “encourage collaboration between humans and AI systems, leveraging the strengths of both to enhance decision-making processes and ensure that ultimate control remains with humans.”
Tempe was one of the first cities to issue guidance on the use of AI. But even now, when such policies have seemingly become almost ubiquitous among city and state governments, that policy stands for some as a guidepost of what AI could be.
Alan Shark, the executive director of the Public Technology Institute, a division of the nonprofit Fusion Learning Partners, said it represents a glimpse at the “human-machine partnership.”
“Augmented, yes. Equal, I don’t know,” Shark said during the institute’s recent AI and Cyber Summit in Washington, D.C. (Disclosure: Alan Shark is currently a columnist at Route Fifty, and our parent company GovExec was a media partner at the PTI summit.)
Enthusiasm for the human-machine partnership was shared by other government leaders at the event as well. James Globe with the Multi-State and Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center said AI could play a useful role as a “virtual assistant.” It could provide public employees with quick facts and play a supporting role in meetings. But, he added, it cannot be the only thing they rely on.
“You have to check and verify,” Globe said. “You have to review.”
Scott Varner, director of IT and management information systems with Frederick County, Virginia, said he also could envisage AI being used by finance departments to help them with their audits by finding anomalies in accounts or to help write ordinances and resolutions for lawmakers.
“Wouldn’t you love to be doing the real work, instead of all the executive summaries you’re doing now?” he asked, referring to government employees.
Integrating AI tools might be challenging for some governments, however, especially as its use may require the approval of a software review board or similar body. Greg Scott, chief technology officer and director of IT with Fairfax County, Virginia, said the county has what it calls an architecture review board for its technology. The issue is that there is likely a learning curve for members of these boards, as AI is relatively new and many aren’t familiar with it or the data it is trained on.
Employees need a lot of education, too. They must “really see it, feel it, feel the advantage of” AI in their work, Varner said, and appreciate how certain use cases can make their jobs easier. It means building trust, he continued, which can take a while.
Robert Reynolds, chief information officer for Orange County, North Carolina, agreed, noting,“I don't think that we're quite there yet in terms of trusting any machine or any application.”
Reynolds cautioned government leaders not to present AI tools to their staff as a solution to growing workloads, especially as populations grow and demographics shift.
“No matter how big our staff gets, you always have this thing where we don't have enough people,” he said. “The amount of staff is pretty much congruent with the amount of work to be done.”
Even with more than a dozen staffers, Reynolds said it will be difficult to find the time or internal resources to support a new AI innovation or function. To deal with the expected onslaught of requests to use the technology, Reynolds’ county has created a focus group among its IT liaisons to help work out the best use cases and experiments.
Indeed, new technologies like AI will inevitably mean more work, panelists agreed. They underscored that reality by pointing to recommendations to appoint a chief AI officer to oversee the new technology and all its applications and uses.
But for now, CIOs and CISOs are tasked with managing the human-machine partnership and the resulting workload. “You wear many hats in local government,” Varner said. “That's one of those realities.”
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