Chatbot assistants for all San Jose metropolis workers?
Certainly, the high-tech development might quickly be coming to Metropolis Corridor as San Jose leaders need to broaden AI use to spice up productiveness all through the workforce by utilizing a software that will enable all of its 7,000 workers to create their very own chatbot assistants.
San Jose’s newest foray into digital brokers builds on positive factors the town’s made with its a number of profitable synthetic intelligence pilots and packages geared toward enhancing workers’ expertise.
The town has solicited proposals for a generative AI platform that will enable workers to cut back some repetitive and administrative features of their jobs — akin to writing stories, analyzing knowledge, summarizing paperwork and supporting software program growth — and as a substitute give attention to “higher order tasks.”
Over the previous few years, San José has sought to change into a number one authority in utilizing AI for presidency features to reinforce effectivity and effectiveness.
In 2023, the town examined a bus route software that reduces the time spent at purple lights and retains public transit on schedule. It additionally makes use of AI to enhance language translation on authorities net pages and proactively determine potholes, graffiti, unlawful dumping, and homeless encampments, permitting it to ship companies earlier than receiving a service request. Extra lately, the town introduced it might broaden its highway security pilot program after efficiently figuring out potholes and trash particles with 97% and 88% accuracy, respectively, and launch a program to hurry up allowing occasions.
Together with serving to to discovered the GovAI Coalition — a gaggle of native, state and federal entities that shares methods and options — the town has created multi-track curricula with San José State to show its workers how one can use AI instruments.
Stephen Liang, an information analyst within the metropolis’s Info Expertise Division, is certainly a fan.
He stated the AI assistant he constructed through the metropolis’s preliminary coaching program has fully modified how he manages 311 service request knowledge, permitting him to give attention to extra advanced issues. He added that the mixture of instruments will enable workers to serve residents higher.
“As part of this, I developed the 311 Service Request Analyzer, which quickly identifies the top 10 issues residents are submitting,” Liang stated. “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 resources are directed where they’re needed most.”
By the primary two cohorts of the town’s initiative to assist workers enhance their expertise, Mahan stated about 80 workers accomplished the programs, documenting financial savings of greater than 10,000 hours of workers time and roughly $50,000 in consulting prices by utilizing AI functions all through many metropolis departments.
For instance, an environmental inspector created a GPT that might learn over 700 pages of code paperwork in seconds. Mahan’s finances workforce additionally used AI to identify spending and income traits and supply perception by querying previous monetary data.
An worker within the metropolis’s Division of Transportation used AI to use for a federal grant for electrical car charging stations. Although the Trump Administration pulled the grant, the AI program constructed allowed the town to pivot and efficiently apply for a multi-million greenback funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Fee.
However whereas the endgame is to enhance productiveness, Mahan acknowledged that AI use just isn’t foolproof, as evidenced by the variety of high-profile AI “hallucinations” — incorrect or deceptive outputs produced.
For instance, earlier this yr, a “Make America Healthy Again” report launched by Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy included a number of non-existent citations possible ensuing from AI.
Generative AI additionally led to a rise in legal professional self-discipline proceedings as a result of submission of court docket paperwork referencing pretend case legislation.
“We have to train our staff to go back to the original source and do verifications and check things,” Mahan stated. “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 technology to gather and process information more quickly than we used to.”
Regardless of metropolis officers’ need to lean extra into AI, some considerations linger amongst metropolis staffers.
John Tucker, a consultant from American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers (AFSCME) Native 101, which represents hundreds of the town’s workforce, stated Mahan has not spoken to the union or frontline staff.
Tucker added that AI use can be a focus of upcoming contract negotiations and staff will demand “strong guardrails to ensure new technology strengthens public services and respects the people who provide them.”
“We support technology that helps us serve the public better, tools that make our jobs safer, faster, or more effective,” Tucker stated. “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 José running. AI should support that work, not hollow it out.”
Mahan has repeatedly burdened that the usage of AI is to not substitute staff, and that it must be seen as an funding.
“We are helping our people gain access to and train with the best tools on the market,” Mahan stated. “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.”
