San Jose employees, meet your new chatbot assistant? City eyes expansion of AI

Chatbot assistants for all San Jose city employees Indeed the high-tech trend may soon be coming to City Hall as San Jose leaders want to expand AI use to boost productivity throughout the workforce by using a tool that would allow all of its employees to create their own chatbot assistants San Jose s latest foray into virtual agents builds on gains the city s made with its multiple thriving artificial intelligence pilots and programs aimed at enhancing employees skills Related Articles Big Tech is paying millions to train teachers on AI in a push to bring chatbots into classrooms AI-powered Bay Area home insurance startup expands in risky markets Sex is a big realm for the AI industry ChatGPT won t be the first to try to profit from it Bay Area town employs AI to ease traffic Walmart partners with OpenAI to offer shopping on ChatGPT The city has solicited proposals for a generative AI platform that would allow employees to reduce certain repetitive and administrative aspects of their jobs such as writing reports analyzing figures summarizing documents and supporting program advancement and instead focus on higher order tasks I think generative AI offers the possibility of automating selected of the the greater part routine and time-consuming elements of the job which we ve already seen documented evidence of employees and multiple departments becoming - more productive San Jos Mayor Matt Mahan declared in an interview with The Mercury News Over the past scarce years San Jos has sought to become a leading authority in using AI for administration functions to enhance efficiency and effectiveness In the city tested a bus journey tool that reduces the time spent at red lights and keeps inhabitants transit on schedule It also uses AI to improve language translation on cabinet web pages and proactively identify potholes graffiti illegal dumping and homeless encampments allowing it to deliver services before receiving a facility request More in recent weeks the city publicized it would expand its road safety pilot scheme after successfully identifying potholes and trash debris with and accuracy respectively and launch a activity to speed up permitting times Along with helping to identified the GovAI Coalition a group of local state and federal entities that shares strategies and solutions the city has created multi-track curricula with San Jos State to teach its employees how to use AI tools Stephen Liang a details analyst in the city s Information Apparatus Department is definitely a fan He stated the AI assistant he built during the city s initial training activity has entirely changed how he manages amenity request records allowing him to focus on more complex problems He added that the combination of tools will allow employees to serve residents better As part of this I developed the Facility Request Analyzer which speedily identifies the top issues residents are submitting Liang reported What used to take hours or even an entire day depending on the number of requests now takes just minutes That speed means we can respond faster spot trends earlier and ensure our materials are directed where they re needed majority Through the first two cohorts of the city s initiative to help employees improve their skills Mahan announced about employees completed the courses documenting savings of more than hours of staff time and roughly in consulting costs by using AI applications throughout a large number of city departments For example an environmental inspector created a GPT that could read over pages of code documents in seconds Mahan s budget group also used AI to spot spending and revenue trends and provide insight by querying past financial records An employee in the city s Department of Transportation used AI to apply for a federal grant for electric bus charging stations Though the Trump Administration pulled the grant the AI activity built allowed the city to pivot and successfully apply for a multi-million dollar funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission But while the endgame is to improve productivity Mahan acknowledged that AI use is not foolproof as evidenced by the number of high-profile AI hallucinations incorrect or misleading outputs produced For example earlier this year a Make America Healthy Again record disclosed by Physical condition and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy included multiple non-existent citations likely resulting from AI Generative AI also led to an increase in attorney discipline proceedings due to the submission of court documents referencing fake event law More locally a civic AI platform appearing in the Google news feed produced content from a segment of a current San Jose City Council meeting that referred to Mahan as Mayor Sam Liccardo We have to train our staff to go back to the original source and do verifications and check things Mahan mentioned With every source you have to be particularly on top of it I think using a large language model does not give you permission to turn your brain off and you have to be just as curious and inquiring using an LLM as you might be with a Google search It s not like we aren t already using mechanism to gather and process information more promptly than we used to Despite city agents desire to lean more into AI a few concerns linger among city staffers John Tucker a representative from American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees AFSCME Local which represents thousands of the city s workforce commented Mahan has not spoken to the union or frontline workers Tucker added that AI use would be a focal point of upcoming contract negotiations and workers will demand strong guardrails to ensure new mechanism strengthens constituents services and respects the people who provide them We promotion equipment that helps us serve the constituents better tools that make our jobs safer faster or more effective Tucker disclosed But replacing people with algorithms is the opposite of getting back to basics Residents rely on the human judgment and experience of city workers to keep San Jos running AI should promotion that work not hollow it out Mahan has repeatedly stressed that the use of AI is not to replace workers and that it should be viewed as an assets We are helping our people gain access to and train with the best tools on the industry Mahan explained We recognize that generative AI is here to stay and only going to grow in importance and is likely to literally shape the nature of work for the next generation and beyond We want to equip our workforce to be on the cutting edge of that trend for their sake and our residents