MONTICELLO – Since the inception of Artificial Intelligence (AI) - powered web searches and content generators like Chat GPT three years ago, the world has seen the power and influence of artificial intelligence expand exponentially as it becomes one of the most ubiquitous and polarizing of new technological developments in the 21st century. 

Business leaders have embraced the powerful new technology to streamline information gathering and generate content, while critics fear the existential dangers of giving too much control to a non-human entity. 

In just three years’ time, AI development has seen significant increases in intelligence scores of AI machines, as well as a huge increase in the cost of the most advanced AI supercomputers. Over the same period, generative AI has been implicated in at least six deaths nationwide, according to a letter written to 13 Big Tech companies by a bipartisan coalition of 41 attorneys general, including New York Attorney General Letitia James. On Monday, January 5, Governor Kathy Hochul unveiled new proposals for legislation to help protect children from harmful AI chatbots integrated on online platforms. 

Benefits vs. Costs and Risks

These real-world fears of AI’s misuse coupled with the increases in energy, land, and water requirements of AI datacenters beg the question: do the benefits of this technology outweigh the costs and potential risks? Another question: can the use of AI yield benefits for residents and government employees in upstate New York? Sullivan County thinks so and was one of the first rural municipalities in the country to implement AI into its daily operations. 

On February 28, 2024, Sullivan County Communications Director Dan Hust joined a panel of speakers at Google’s Manhattan offices to discuss generative AI’s applications in government in a seminar entitled: “Harnessing the Power of AI for Public Good: Innovative Applications in New York.” 

Hust’s presentation highlighted how a rural community can benefit from AI technology through Sullivan County’s web-based chatbot named “Saige,” an acronym for Sullivan Artificial Intelligence Government Employee. He explained how easy Saige was to implement and how it streamlined productivity for government employees.

Twenty-two months later, Hust remained hopeful about AI’s ability to serve government employees, saying the goal of using AI is “not to replace humans, but to augment” their capabilities. He said Saige, which is powered by Google’s AI model Gemini, was currently offline but anticipates that it will be back sometime this year, contingent on the finalization of an ongoing contract with Google. 

“Saige needed some tweaks in how she was responding to things, so Dan [Hust] took her offline,” said Information Technology Services Commissioner Lorne Green. He explained that Saige was successful at streamlining inquiries at the DMV but ran into trouble when it gave out incorrect election data after accessing an outdated webpage.

Despite this hiccup, Green echoed Hust’s optimism, “AI has incredible potential as long as it’s being used responsibly.” 

He said Sullivan County has utilized AI to run its cyber security for the past seven years to analyze network and personal computer activity. 

“This eliminates the need for a security team,” said Green. “Government staff are not here 76% of the time – we need tools that are working when we’re not.”

Green, who is chair of the New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC) task force and was a participant at NYSAC’s first Artificial Intelligence Summit, was cautiously optimistic about AI’s ability to streamline certain tedious tasks while acknowledging the technology’s inherent dangers. He is part of an AI workgroup which is in the process of developing an AI-enabled application store that counties statewide may use in their daily operations as early as 2026.

When asked to give a forecast of how Sullivan County will use AI over the next five years, Green predicted that it will be implemented “in a measured fashion” to produce a quicker delivery of services and complete tasks like budget analysis and performance analysis. He said public safety was an area where AI can be used in tandem with security cameras to instantly compile clips of individual people or vehicles suspected in a crime. 

“I use Chat GPT to rephrase professional emails,” said Green, who also has used generative AI to analyze large documents. In an instance when eight different vendors each submit a 100-page Request for Proposal (RFP), he can use AI to set up a comprehensive comparison to determine the best proposal in a relatively short amount of time. 

“[AI] gives the ability to process a large amount of data,” said Green, who concluded that “the timesaving factor makes it worth it.” 

Despite his optimism, Green acknowledged the dangers of misusing AI’s power and stressed the importance of instituting safety policies and employee training. He emphasized the need for ethical standards, transparency requirements, and the overall responsibility of government employees to review content provided by AI tools. Green said, “Training is a weak point statewide- there is a need to develop training” so employees can use AI properly. 

This is why Green created the Sullivan County AI Policy, a four-page document which covers ethical considerations, accountability, transparency, decision making, and a list of acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI in County business. And yes, parts of the policy were created using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but as the policy itself stipulates, its use is written into the document and all the document and all the generated content was reviewed and edited by a human prior to its inclusion in the policy.