Civic Innovations

It seems that not a week passes without the rollout of a new AI tool that is marketed as a “gamechanger” to government agencies. 

With the release last year of ChatGPT and the explosion of research and work into powerful new generative AI tools, government agencies now have at their disposal some incredibly powerful tools. These tools promise to reshape the way they operate and conduct their business, and how they communicate and engage with their customers.

But how can agencies determine what the most appropriate use of generative AI is? And how can they begin to test out ideas and approaches to the responsible and ethical use of AI without running afoul of the many open ethical, legal, and security questions surrounding these tools?

To help identify the best use of generative AI tools to support an agency’s mission and improve services to customers, agencies need generative AI Laboratories.

Room to experiment

Some agencies, like the General Services Administration have restricted employee access to AI tools as they assess the implications of adopting these new technologies on their operations and their interactions with customers. Other agencies, like the US Department of Agriculture have adopted a measured approach to adopting generative AI.

Some state and local governments have taken a more experimental approach, encouraging employees to test out new generative AI tools to see how they can help government employees do their work. Rather than banning the use of generative AI tools, the City of Boston instead issued guidelines intended to set guardrails for how employees use the new technology. 

Because of their increasing ubiquity and power, AI tools are already finding their way into government agencies and being used by public sector employees to do their work. However, because of the many unresolved questions about data privacy and security, accuracy, intellectual property and copyright, and other issues, these tools also carry with them potential risks for agencies as they start to use them.

Government agencies need room to find out the best uses of generative AI to achieve their goals and to help those they serve. 

Characteristics of an AI Laboratory

“Generative AI is a tool. We are responsible for the outcomes of our tools. For example, if autocorrect unintentionally changes a word – changing the meaning of something we wrote, we are still responsible for the text. Technology enables our work, it does not excuse our judgment nor our accountability”

– City of Boston Interim Guidelines for Using Generative AI

To be effective, a generative AI Laboratory would ideally have the following qualities to help governments determine outcomes for those they serve.

• Based on open source Large Language Models (LLM) models, to provide maximum flexibility, mitigate vendor lock-in, and avoid issues related to data privacy.
• LLM models used should be auditable, and easily corrected based on the quality of generated output.
• Run in a closed environment, like inside a dedicated virtual private cloud (VPC) environment to avoid issues of data security.
• Would produce results and outcomes that are open and transparent, as called for by Executive Order 13960 (Promoting the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in the Federal Government).
• Would be easy to obtain, not requiring a complex or lengthy procurement in order for agencies to start learning how they can put generative AI to use. 

We’ve seen the incredible pace of innovation around generative AI tools, and we know it’s inevitable that they will be adopted by government employees and used to do their jobs. Governments need ways to safely experiment with these new tools, and discover for themselves what works best for those they serve.