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Episode: AI in Local Government: Interview with Roxy Ndebumadu [AI Today Podcast]

Author: AI & Data Today
Duration: 00:17:29

Episode Shownotes

AI is being adopted by many organizations and they are seeing dramatic improvement, increased productivity, and cost savings. However, government at all levels, including local governments, are also seeing dramatic improvements when adopting AI. On this episode of AI Today we interview Roxy Ndebumadu. She is the District 4 Councilmember

at Bowie, MD City Council. Continue reading AI in Local Government: Interview with Roxy Ndebumadu [AI Today Podcast] at Cognilytica.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_00
The AI Today podcast, produced by Cognolitica, cuts through the hype and noise to identify what is really happening now in the world of artificial intelligence.

00:00:10 Speaker_00
Learn about emerging AI trends, technologies, and use cases from Cognolitica analysts and guest experts.

00:00:22 Speaker_04
Hello and welcome to the AI Today podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Walsh.

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And I'm your host, Ron Schmelzer. The interesting thing about AI, as you all know, as it's making its way into our daily lives, is the way in which it's impacting us in ways that we know and ways that we don't even know. The interesting thing about

00:00:41 Speaker_03
other technologies say like your mobile phone or social media or the internet web to a certain extent you can decide whether or not to engage with that technology maybe not use social media maybe not use the web maybe not use your mobile phone or not even use them in certain circumstances or maybe people may even say you can't use your mobile phone in certain circumstances but that may or may not even be the case with AI

00:01:03 Speaker_03
As AI becomes embedded and part of all of our daily activities and part of the decision-making and part of our interactions, hey, even going through the drive-through these days may be AI-enabled.

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From that perspective, it's becoming very important to consider the ways in which we have this relationship with AI. the ethical, responsible, the governance, the transparency, all sorts of aspects to it.

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And of course, this involves our relationships with our public government agencies as well at the state, federal, local, and even international levels.

00:01:39 Speaker_04
Exactly. So if you've been listening to AI Today, you know that we do cover AI laws and regulations and we've had podcasts on that because it really is important to kind of, you know, understand the holistic picture.

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And that's why we love to have guests who are from the public sector as well on this podcast so we can get their unique perspectives. If you've listened to previous podcasts, you know we've had a number of different guests

00:02:01 Speaker_04
And for today's podcast, we're so excited to have with us Roxy Ndebumadu, who is District 4 Council Member at Bowie Maryland City Council. So welcome, Roxy, and thanks so much for joining us.

00:02:12 Speaker_02
Thank you both for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

00:02:15 Speaker_02
From the moment I met you and I listened to your thoughts on AI and your perspective on policy and legislation and regulation on artificial intelligence, I was like, I got to have a conversation with those folks.

00:02:27 Speaker_02
I got to talk to them and I got to come see their audience. So I'm so thrilled to be here.

00:02:31 Speaker_04
Yeah, thank you. And for our listeners who didn't know, Ron and I were invited to speak at the Prince George's County, an event that they held maybe about a month ago now at this point. And that's where we got to meet Roxy.

00:02:43 Speaker_04
So it was such a wonderful experience.

00:02:45 Speaker_04
So we'd like to start by having you introduce yourself to our listeners who may not know about you and tell us a little bit about your background and your current role now, and also how you used AI to help in your last campaign.

00:02:57 Speaker_02
Oh my gosh, that's such a funny story. I need to stop telling it because it's so funny. And I also don't want people to be scared. But for those of you who may not be familiar with me, my name is Roxy Ndebumadu.

00:03:09 Speaker_02
I have the distinct honor of representing the greatest city in all of the United States of America called the fabulous city of Bowie, Maryland. And we do have homes for sale if you're looking for relocation areas.

00:03:19 Speaker_02
So we'll gladly welcome you with open arms. I have been on the city council for about five years now. I first ran for election back in 2019 right when I was at Microsoft.

00:03:31 Speaker_02
My unique and interesting background is I'm a graduate of Howard University here in Washington, D.C. I studied nursing and health care. And then right after graduating from Howard,

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I went into cybersecurity operations, then built out my career in product program management at Microsoft, and then went over to Amazon and worked at Twitch and online safety doing proactive detection and thinking about community guidelines, misinformation, disinformation, and how we leverage artificial intelligence tools for proactive detection to prevent mass harm.

00:04:04 Speaker_02
And then I started my own startup in the mental health space that's leveraging AI for behavioral health. and how I leveraged AI in my last election. Okay, let me make it very, very real for people.

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The way that we thought about leveraging AI in our last election was really, we really wanted to understand what was the sentiment of society at the time? What were people researching? What were people bringing top of mind? How were people feeling?

00:04:32 Speaker_02
What were people saying out there in society? And what were the key indicators and factors that were inhibiting people's quality of life? That was a big key detail for us. So really what we focused on was figuring out

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How do we get the right sentiments and the right inputs to really craft messaging that uniquely expresses how I would represent my community and how I would reflect legislation that would enhance their quality of life so.

00:05:01 Speaker_02
In tangible terms, that looks like drafting messaging. Of course, I would edit everything. Of course, it would be reviewed by me.

00:05:08 Speaker_02
That looked like sentiment analysis on society as a whole, democracy, where things were at the time, what people were researching. That looked like task automation, helping us automate mundane tasks.

00:05:21 Speaker_02
And then on image creation, so certain graphics that we needed to create to push out to the community helping us articulate or convey a particular emotion that would land with an audience or with a reader or with a viewer.

00:05:33 Speaker_02
That was really key in our campaign and the mailers that we used.

00:05:37 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's really very exciting.

00:05:38 Speaker_03
I mean, and if anything, I mean, that's really the best way to leverage technology in general, especially AI, is to use it as an assistive tool, as an augmented tool, to use it in conjunction with our own innate capabilities that we have for common sense and reasoning and creativity and communication.

00:05:54 Speaker_03
And for our listeners who have been listening to us, we've been on the soft skill series recently and encourage you all to listen to it, where ironically, as we use more and more AI, the more we need those skills, which we don't really learn

00:06:05 Speaker_03
that well in school. It's interesting how we're not really taught all those critical thinking skills and other things that we need nowadays. We can't delegate that stuff to the machine.

00:06:15 Speaker_03
So it's really great to hear that you've been using it in those ways, because at the end of the day, the tool is pretty powerful, and we can use it for these great value cases here.

00:06:24 Speaker_03
So digging into a little bit more, and especially from your perspective, as you're putting these

00:06:29 Speaker_03
guardrails and aspects of how we're going to use AI within the public sphere, especially, you know, how and why do you believe AI is important for local governments?

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Because we've heard from many interviews on state and federal and international level, we understand where that regulation is coming from there. But at this local government level, how and where do you believe AI is important?

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How can it be used to impact community services and operations?

00:06:55 Speaker_02
Before I answer that question, Ron, let me just add a really quick line from a person that I deeply admire. Her name is Shana Brouchard, and she happens to be a commissioner at the FEC. But she spoke in her individual capacity.

00:07:10 Speaker_02
And one of the things that she said at our last event with Microsoft that really, really resonated with me was she talked about how artificial intelligence was going to give

00:07:20 Speaker_02
This level of power this level of ingenuity to local electeds who are seeking to run for elected office it was kind of going to equalize the playing field in a way that it never has before.

00:07:30 Speaker_02
We think about your traditional candidate or somebody that might be out of the box or doesn't come from a lineage of politicians or government services. sometimes people don't understand how to get their footing in.

00:07:41 Speaker_02
And so to have this tool that kind of really gives you knowledge at your fingertips and helps you understand how you can connect with people or how you can reach a broader audience is truly a powerful thing and truly going to equalize things in a way that we haven't seen it before.

00:07:55 Speaker_02
So I really wanted to start off with her quote. But when I think about some of the stuff that we're doing here in the city of Bowie and the things that I've pushed forward over the years, the first thing I want to talk about is

00:08:04 Speaker_02
smart cities because essentially when you think about smart cities artificial intelligence is at the hub of that whether you're thinking about internet of things whether you're thinking about data analysis whether you're thinking about productivity it's really at the hub of all of those things so one of the things that we've talked about for our government services if you will is really making sure that we have a

00:08:26 Speaker_02
a baseline of upskilling in the area of artificial intelligence for our employees.

00:08:32 Speaker_02
Because the reality is, when you think about productivity, and you think about certain tasks like office management, or you think about admins, or you think about different cashiers and clerks, those are pretty much those jobs that

00:08:48 Speaker_02
artificial intelligence kind of somewhat displaces in a way to a degree they start to automate tasks and the more and more you adopt them then it it provides this unique opportunity for a person to contribute in a way that they never have before so for some of our admins and our office managers we've talked about

00:09:06 Speaker_02
investing in some of their social skills a little bit more. So leadership, critical thinking, decision-making power. How do you really diffuse conflict with constituents when you have somebody that is dealing with community services?

00:09:19 Speaker_02
Maybe we're doing an intake for a child that is having a little bit of difficulty in the home.

00:09:25 Speaker_02
How do we really augment this capability of our staff workers so that they're not focused on such the mundane tasks, that they end up feeling pressured or overwhelmed when it comes time to deal with some of those more critical situations that we need them to be all hands on deck for?

00:09:43 Speaker_02
So that's one example. Another example is really on transportation. This is something I'm very passionate about because when you think about the city of Bowie, we sit in proximity to Baltimore and Washington, D.C. and Virginia.

00:09:55 Speaker_02
We're kind of like that central suburbia. And it was funny, I was looking at D.C. labor statistics, and if you look in the last two years, 33,000 people have moved out of Washington, D.C. and moved into Prince George's County.

00:10:07 Speaker_02
And when most people move into Prince George's County, they move into the city of Bowie because we're the largest municipality here.

00:10:12 Speaker_02
Now, that's a blessing and a curse for us because that means that we bring in more vibrant intellectuals, people who are contributing to the community, but then it adds more pressure to our transportation patterns.

00:10:24 Speaker_02
So when you think about 301 Corridor, Route 50, 197, 214, these are some of the major roads that go through the city of Bowie. So imagine a world where we had

00:10:38 Speaker_02
sensors on our traffic patterns that are continuously updating us when crashes are happening, that are continuously updating us when a pothole is becoming deeper and deeper, when we're experiencing sunk holes, when we have lights that are out, when we have intersections that are no longer working because people are leveraging them and patterns are evolving in people's human behaviors because of how trends are shifting.

00:11:02 Speaker_02
Imagine a world where we had access to that data and we had predictive analytics that's telling us, you might want to consider this, or you might want to consider a pattern that goes this way, that's proactively alleviating the stress of people.

00:11:15 Speaker_02
Sometimes when I use this example, people say, well, Roxy, why is data on transportation patterns so important? It's important because it inhibits your quality of life.

00:11:26 Speaker_02
I'm getting ready to leave the house in the next two hours and I've got to head on down to Alexandria and drive into Alexandria. Can you imagine if I'm running behind and I hit a pothole and the next thing you hear is boom. That ruins my entire day.

00:11:39 Speaker_02
When I show up to my appointment, I'm going to be frustrated and I'm going to be angry. And it's not going to be the person's receiving me fault.

00:11:46 Speaker_02
It's going to be the pothole's fault that I could have avoided if there were adequate data that's going to local government for them to fix the pothole so I can get to where I need to go in one piece.

00:11:56 Speaker_02
Then imagine if I'm running low on cash because I'm providing for my family. Now I have a tire that's going low. That's another expense that I didn't account for.

00:12:04 Speaker_02
And so these are some of the ways that artificial intelligence are going to be very key for us in local communities, specifically local government, to make sure that we're accessing that data at our fingertips, to do that sentiment analysis, to transfer that data into predictive analytics so that we can be much more proactive and aggressive about providing the quality of life that people deserve.

00:12:28 Speaker_04
Yeah, we're big on data-driven insights. Let data tell you where things are. And it's interesting that you bring that up. Cities that are growing obviously are great, right? They're thriving cities.

00:12:39 Speaker_04
But then you also need to think about that infrastructure as you grow with it. Even with us, I mean, we have children that are school-age. I've had to learn a lot more about how local cities and local places operate.

00:12:51 Speaker_04
APFO, Adequate Public Facility Ordinance. What does that mean?

00:12:56 Speaker_04
And how do you use data to help you grow a city in an effective way to have enough libraries and public spaces and that make sure that your roads and your infrastructure can support that growing community?

00:13:05 Speaker_04
Because if it can't, you really feel it, right? You know, especially at that local level. That's why it's so important. So, you know, we love to hear about that.

00:13:14 Speaker_04
As local governments, too, you don't always have resources that maybe the federal government has, especially when it comes to money and budgets. I know everybody always has budget issues, no matter where they work.

00:13:27 Speaker_04
But how specifically do you think that local governments, what strategies can they use to adopt and effectively upskill the employees that they have on AI technologies to ensure that they are prepared for future advancements?

00:13:41 Speaker_02
Kathleen, I love this question, and I'm trying not to bounce out of my seat. So I'm glad that your viewers can't see that.

00:13:48 Speaker_02
But let me start off by saying, if you are a federal government employee, you happen to be a staffer for one of your Congress or senators, please make sure that you're thinking about the city of Bowie in your budget, because we need all the money that we can get from the federal government.

00:14:00 Speaker_02
So let me just put that soft plug out there to advocate for my community. Now onto your question on the upscaling part.

00:14:06 Speaker_02
I think it's really going to be key for local governments to get very, very creative about the way that they go about upskilling and making sure that employees have the adequate resources that they need to learn this technology.

00:14:17 Speaker_02
The biggest pushback that I received here in the city of Bowie, because I led that effort to do this upskilling effort, and I was the one who said, we need to invest in our government employees.

00:14:26 Speaker_02
We need to invest in our government employees because eventually Some of the things that they do, some of the basic project management tasks, office management, we've talked a lot about a lot of those kind of like first frontline tasks.

00:14:37 Speaker_02
Those are the ones that are a jeopardy. So I received a lot of pushback because people would say things like, well, artificial intelligence isn't here yet. Okay. All right. Sure. then we get pushed back on, like, well, why is that important for us?

00:14:51 Speaker_02
Like, we can just keep putting that in the budget. Okay, but they'll reach a point where that's no longer a sustainable method, and you will have a constituency that will get very frustrated on how you're spending their tax dollars.

00:15:03 Speaker_02
So I hear that line of thinking, but that's not the most forward-thinking approach that we could possibly be adopting. So one of the things that I did back in, I think this was 2021, I established a one-of-a-kind partnership with Coursera.

00:15:17 Speaker_02
And within our partnership with Coursera, we really focused on curating a particular dashboard to understand the types of soft skills that our employees needed to be developing in that would kind of work alongside of those artificial intelligence

00:15:35 Speaker_02
Skills that they were learning so when you think about how do you identify basic tasks that could be automated or that you could leverage artificial intelligence to provide more capacity for your own human ingenuity so you can focus on the more strategic things so that you can up level in your career because we all know that up leveling in your career.

00:15:53 Speaker_02
most of the time yields to a better quality of life, a better work life balance. And then it also yields to a higher paying salary. And so really, it was my focus to figure out how do we, one, identify where those those critical skills are.

00:16:08 Speaker_02
So whether that's on conflict resolution, whether that's on communication, which is a big one, leadership development and leadership skills, building cohesive teams, fostering cross collaboration, really identifying all of those areas that are really key for us

00:16:23 Speaker_02
us, and then identifying where are the basic areas that you can start to learn artificial intelligence.

00:16:29 Speaker_02
One of the things that I actually curated for some of my constituents here in District 4 was I had a lot of constituents who were a little bit aging out of the workforce who would say, like Roxy, I really want to stay competitive in my job.

00:16:41 Speaker_02
I'm a project manager. Where do I start? So we curated this dashboard of artificial intelligence for project managers? And what does it look like to leverage this tool or this essential technology to augment your human capacity?

00:16:54 Speaker_02
And that's really what we did. And so we pushed it out to residents. They learned and they were really, really excited because for them, it was exciting to learn something that was so new and so futuristic and so innovative.

00:17:05 Speaker_02
And we're talking about constituents that are like, anywhere from 43 to like 75 years old. Like to them, this is something that they couldn't even have fathomed. And it was just such a rewarding and gratifying thing.

00:17:18 Speaker_02
So when I think about upskilling, I think it's critical. Unfortunately, here in Prince George's County, we're not at that juncture. People, because they don't have similar backgrounds as you and I, and I get it.

00:17:29 Speaker_02
I'm privileged in that sense where I've had the opportunity to work at the Microsofts of the world, which is a fabulous and incredible corporation, by the way. I've had the opportunity to work at Amazon and other social media startups.

00:17:40 Speaker_02
So I see the importance of the technology and I see where the space is going. But for somebody who doesn't have that background, I can see how it's easy to fall into this line of thinking of, oh, that's hogwash. We don't need that. We don't need it.

00:17:55 Speaker_02
Oh, no, it's not here yet. Oh, that's so few people in your futuristic thinking. I can see how that plagues them.

00:18:02 Speaker_02
But what I want to implore people who are listening to this, whether you're in local government or whether you're in the private sector, at the end of the day, we're all constituents. We all reach out to somebody who represents us in some capacity.

00:18:15 Speaker_02
What I want to impart you on, before I ever leave this podcast, is understand the importance of artificial intelligence and the fact that it is here to stay. It may not be in its prime stages yet, because I genuinely don't think we're there yet.

00:18:29 Speaker_02
We're still in generative AI. We have not reached AGI. There are different theories out there. However,

00:18:37 Speaker_02
I really want to implore you to understand if we don't harness this technology and we don't find a way to be involved and we don't prepare people for what's coming you will be left behind that's just the reality of it because technology does move at the speed of light absolutely this is actually a hot conversation we had during the panel.

00:18:54 Speaker_03
Because education and skilling for everybody is so critical to participation, really, in the economy of, I wouldn't say the future, like the economy is kind of here already. Like, for example, this is like the late 1990s, we were talking about how

00:19:09 Speaker_03
No very few people actually had mobile phones back then little and smartphones like everybody was either if you had a phone back then it was definitely like early flip phone it was a brick phone it was something like that the nokia right and you could have made the argument that in the late nineties that maybe the internet and the mobile phone

00:19:24 Speaker_03
was there but it wasn't absolutely necessary to conduct your daily life but now here we are it's very difficult to conduct anything in your daily life without internet access without a mobile phone it's just very difficult and that's the position we have with AI it's not necessarily that

00:19:40 Speaker_03
We're going to be dealing with these autonomous robots out there doing stuff. That's sort of the futurist. That's what people think about. That's not the vision of AI.

00:19:47 Speaker_03
The vision of AI are these tools that are helping people do various tasks in their life and basically be accentuated. The common refrain now is it's not that AI may replace your job. It's just somebody who knows how to use AI will replace your job.

00:20:01 Speaker_03
And that's the danger. So everybody needs to kind of get that basic level of skill. So we're thrilled to explain it. And really, that was amazing. You mentioned AI for project management. We talk about that all the time. It's a crazy example.

00:20:13 Speaker_03
We're like, this is kismet here. This is like we're all kind of aligned in this thinking. Yeah. And our listeners know that we talk about AI for project management all the time.

00:20:21 Speaker_03
As a matter of fact, we talk a lot about, there's a methodology even for running and managing AI projects called CPM AI. And for our listeners who don't know about it, we even have a free intro course. Take advantage of it while you can.

00:20:32 Speaker_03
You can learn more about intro to CPM AI at our website at aitoday.live. Slash intro. It's a free course. You can learn more about that. But, you know, things are so much in alignment here.

00:20:45 Speaker_03
It's so fantastic also to have somebody who represents locality, who's in government, who understands technology, who's like in the same wavelength. It's not very common. I think you're very unusual. Yeah.

00:20:58 Speaker_03
I mean, so maybe talk about that from your experience, you know, what it's like to have this unique background and perspective, and maybe also what it's like, you know, given that you've worked with a lot of these tech companies and educational institutions, like, you know, what that collaboration can look like, what that whole AI ecosystem can look like when local governments are really partnered very well in that way.

00:21:21 Speaker_02
I will say this for your listeners too. If you don't go use the free course, I'm going to push it out to my community and it may not be available anymore. So you got to get it while it's hot because I'm sending it in my email blob.

00:21:34 Speaker_01
There you go.

00:21:35 Speaker_02
So get it while it's hot. I think, oh my gosh, it's an interesting dichotomy that I think sets me apart in so many ways, but also creates such a frustrating experience for me as a person.

00:21:50 Speaker_02
And this is where you get to the vulnerability of me as a leader.

00:21:54 Speaker_02
it's like i see the future and i know where we're going and i know what we need to do because of the the spaces that i've been in the environments that i've been in the ways that i've leveraged the tool in the ways that it's changed my life i mean if you think about my story i was 26 years old when i first ran for office so to have a tool that equalizes the playing field

00:22:13 Speaker_02
and to allow me the capacity to be able to relate to an audience, connect with an audience, and then win an election by 16 votes is a very unheard of and uncommon story.

00:22:24 Speaker_02
And I will tell your listeners, when I first ran for my election, most people, when I first announced my candidacy, which is 45 days before the election, I'll have you know,

00:22:35 Speaker_02
They told me I was going to lose because I was running against three other people. They said, you will lose. You came in the race way too late. I was the second to last person to register. And nobody knew my name whatsoever.

00:22:46 Speaker_02
And so when you think about a tool that has the opportunity to provide leveling of the playing field that hasn't traditionally existed for so many people, the impacts are massive.

00:23:00 Speaker_02
However, because I know these impacts, because I've lived them, I've worked on them, I've experienced them, I think I see it in a way and understand it in a way that's so intimate that a lot of people don't understand. And I see a combination of

00:23:16 Speaker_02
fear, anxiety, disbelief, confusion that plagues people and cripples them. And then when it cripples them, it makes me seem like I'm the crazy one, like I'm just this futuristic.

00:23:29 Speaker_02
I know we've all seen movies, and there was this futuristic person that said, we got to go, we got to go, we got to do the thing, or else this is da-da-da-da-da.

00:23:37 Speaker_02
And then we're like, that crazy person, that crazy person, and then they end up being right.

00:23:41 Speaker_02
And so I think when I reflect on my experiences as an elected official throughout this county, I find myself in a very frustrating experience trying to empower my colleagues on the sense of urgency that we have and the opportunity, not even just a sense of urgency, but the opportunity that we have to really, really scale the impact of the quality of life.

00:24:01 Speaker_02
of the constituents that we are elected to represent.

00:24:04 Speaker_02
But because I understand it intimately and they don't desire to understand it vaguely, we then find ourselves at an impasse and I look like the crazy person talking over here and then they look like the same people talking over here because they understand today and I understand today and tomorrow.

00:24:19 Speaker_02
And so I think for me, it represents this unique dichotomy of gratification and

00:24:26 Speaker_02
And and and resilience and happiness and visionary thinking and visionary leadership but then it also provides on the on the counter side a very stifling experience where sometimes i'm placed in a box and people like to kind of.

00:24:42 Speaker_02
kind of categorize that or visualize that as, oh, she's just crazy, or like, she's just young, or she doesn't know what she's talking about. Like, we're not there yet. Oh, that's crazy. Oh, hogwash. No, we don't need to do that.

00:24:52 Speaker_02
So I think it just represents this unique place that I find myself in. But what I think is so beautiful about my constituency, and I'm so proud to represent Belize, I think they're the most resilient and most powerful constituency on planet Earth.

00:25:04 Speaker_02
One of the things so powerful about them is that I think their understanding. They get it. They see it. Because even now today, A real-world example, when you go to bing.com, Copilot is coming up with your answer. You see it. It's calculating right there.

00:25:19 Speaker_02
It's telling you that it's shuffling through all of the data points that are available to synthesize the answer, to give you an answer at a high level in a quick snippet. That's artificial intelligence right there.

00:25:30 Speaker_02
I think my constituency is starting to see that. They're learning that.

00:25:34 Speaker_02
And they're becoming my fiercest defenders and my fiercest protectors so that we can continue to push the community to power forward and make sure that those in positions of power within local government and county government, because it's all local government, understand what's at stake and how quickly we need to move on this.

00:25:53 Speaker_04
Yeah, I think these are great insights.

00:25:55 Speaker_04
We talk a lot about fears and concerns of AI and sometimes people have fears and they're very emotional and they can be, you know, non-rational, but you can't minimize the fears because then it just makes them have more fears.

00:26:08 Speaker_04
So you need to address them. And then people have legitimate concerns, and those also equally need to be addressed.

00:26:15 Speaker_04
They can be more, you know, fact-based than that emotional base, but we always say don't belittle anybody, don't, you know, talk down to them, and that's how I think the communication helps.

00:26:26 Speaker_04
We also always talk about how AI is a journey, and you can be on, you know, different phases of your journey, but everybody's pushing towards

00:26:34 Speaker_04
you know one common goal and so it's it really is important to continue to talk about this continue to educate people that's why we love to have interviews like this on our podcast so people so people can get you know a bunch of different unique perspectives and really see it from all different angles

00:26:50 Speaker_04
So as a final note, we always love to ask all of our guests the same question and we get such varied response because you're able to bring in your own unique backgrounds and experiences to answer this question.

00:27:01 Speaker_04
As a final note, what do you believe the future of AI is in general and its application to organizations, governments, and beyond?

00:27:10 Speaker_01
Hmm. What do I think AI is in general? Oh my gosh. I really think

00:27:20 Speaker_02
if and when harnessed correctly. It is the future of reigniting human ingenuity. And I say that to say, I think that when you look at society and democracy today, we're really in a state where A lot of people feel very helpless.

00:27:42 Speaker_02
A lot of people feel like they're in this rat race. I don't know if you remember the hamster that was on the wheel that kept going and kept going, but never went anywhere. And I think that represents the way that a lot of people feel today.

00:27:54 Speaker_02
And I think what artificial intelligence can and will do if harnessed and leveraged correctly, it will remind people of their capacity

00:28:03 Speaker_02
and what lies within them so that they can flourish and thrive in a way that's unique to them and a way that's authentic to them.

00:28:09 Speaker_02
It will allow them to be able to speak up in the meetings that they traditionally didn't feel comfortable speaking up in.

00:28:15 Speaker_02
It will allow them to have access to the research that they need to have to be able to scale the project that they want to bring to life and that they want to work on, the idea that was dormant in the back of their mind that they now want to bring to the world.

00:28:27 Speaker_02
It will allow our police officers to feel more empowered in the job that they do, to be able to identify and protect and defend the people that they're here to serve.

00:28:37 Speaker_02
It will allow leaders to be able to show up in their fullest authenticity if they choose to, because of the knowledge that's accessible to them.

00:28:46 Speaker_02
And it will allow us to keep a pulse on the sentiments of society in a way that we haven't maybe traditionally done in the past. And so I think when harnessed correctly,

00:28:57 Speaker_02
across the board, whether that's private sector, whether that's government, whether that's just in our everyday life, it will really be this catalyst when we as humans leverage it correctly to spark and reinvigorate that human ingenuity that I feel like has gotten lost in our society.

00:29:15 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's fantastic. I think we are feeling a lot of that, sometimes powerlessness, helplessness, sometimes frustration.

00:29:23 Speaker_03
I think the thing about technology is that it can help, on the one hand, give a voice and help people amplify their abilities and accentuate their abilities if used correctly. We definitely tell people to do that, make good use of technology.

00:29:35 Speaker_03
But I can also see the flip side. When you feel helpless, you're interacting now with faceless companies.

00:29:41 Speaker_03
you know they have automated systems and you know there's there's there's that anxiety and we definitely feel it and you have to be aware of it you know again and and it's something you you can't necessarily tell convince people based on facts like oh no it's not going to happen you know it's just it's a feeling people have and i think giving people power over technology is very important giving people agency all the things we talk about giving people you know ownership of their own

00:30:08 Speaker_03
persona in there. We talk a lot about that in our layers of trustworthy AI. It's very important now. It's funny how all these things are coming full circle.

00:30:17 Speaker_03
Perhaps our educational institutions, which have really gotten a lot of... When we had the space race, we were all invested in science and engineering and STEM. incredibly important.

00:30:30 Speaker_03
However, we might have been giving ourselves a little short shrift on some of these other soft skills, which we may not be developing.

00:30:37 Speaker_03
We could see what's happening in our personal discourses when we lack the ability to communicate and have good critical thinking and be able to reason properly. And maybe with technology that's helping, maybe it's not something for us to consider.

00:30:52 Speaker_02
But Ron, can I just add one more thing to your point? You made a really good point that I love, and I think that's where we as leaders really need to fight hard to preserve what is the fabric of our society.

00:31:02 Speaker_02
I understand when you think about some of the Amazon supermarkets of the world where you can walk in and there's no person at the cash register and it's just completely automated and there's some components in there.

00:31:14 Speaker_02
However, I think it's our responsibility as leaders to provide preserve that fabric of our society. There is something special about that human interaction. I don't know if everyone has read a book called Lost Connections. It's a super powerful book.

00:31:28 Speaker_02
It's really great. And one of the CEO of my previous company that I worked for, it was one of his favorite books, and that's how I discovered it. And he talked about the art of connection being lost.

00:31:39 Speaker_02
And I think why a lot of people are suffering today is not just because of artificial intelligence and the fastness in which it's moving, it's because we lack that intimacy, that human connection that used to be so embedded in our society.

00:31:51 Speaker_02
And I kid you not, there's nothing like going to a supermarket or going to a gas station or going to McDonald's. I'm sorry, controversial opinion. They have the best French fries. You can be a Burger King gal.

00:32:02 Speaker_02
I'm not for you, but French fries, McDonald's has got it. But there's nothing like going there and talking to somebody and they say like, oh, you have a really nice smile, or you look great today, or I had a really great experience talking to you.

00:32:12 Speaker_02
That has the power and the capability to change the trajectory of somebody's entire week. Just something as simple as that.

00:32:21 Speaker_02
And so I just want to highlight and emphasize what you're saying, that it's on us as leaders to really fight hard to preserve that fabric of our society, because that's something that we'll never be able to replace that's invaluable.

00:32:31 Speaker_03
Absolutely. Still as a world of people connected to other people at the end of the day. So this is fantastic. It's been a fantastic interview. I have a feeling we could probably spend hours talking about it.

00:32:41 Speaker_03
I'm very impressed with everything that you have brought to our audience. I think this is, as mentioned, we're like almost 450 episodes and every episode. And this has just been fantastic.

00:32:53 Speaker_03
Very unusual, I think, in a lot of ways, and in good ways, that you've brought technology experience to local government, even aspects of how the campaign was worked. And oh my goodness, 16 votes. That's just remarkable.

00:33:07 Speaker_03
I mean, there's so much to dig in here, and the data-based aspect of it, and everything we're talking about. So we can talk for a long time. So I encourage our listeners to pay attention to what you're doing.

00:33:15 Speaker_03
We're going to include links to your stuff in our show notes. So you can read more about you and connect with your organization and what you're doing in buoy and in the government and people who want to get involved can get involved.

00:33:28 Speaker_03
So I just want to thank you so much for being part of our AI Today podcast and sharing your insights with our audience.

00:33:35 Speaker_02
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was such a privilege and such a treat for me on this Tuesday morning to be with you. So I appreciate that.

00:33:43 Speaker_04
Yeah, thanks so much. This was such a wonderful discussion. And, you know, we had a great time meeting you in person and a really great time on today's podcast.

00:33:51 Speaker_04
For our listeners that haven't done so already, make sure to subscribe to AI Today so you can get notified of all of our upcoming episodes.

00:33:56 Speaker_04
We have a few more left in our Soft Skills series that we're in the middle of, as well as some wonderful interviews. And then we have some new topics as well. Like this episode and want to hear more?

00:34:06 Speaker_04
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00:34:14 Speaker_04
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00:34:27 Speaker_04
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00:34:39 Speaker_04
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