State Should Build Computing Center, Empower Staff to Use AI, Hoover Urges

The state’s authorities watchdog panel issued a report Tuesday to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature with a sequence of suggestions on how the state can advance its use of synthetic intelligence to learn Californians.

The Little Hoover Commission’s chair, Pedro Nava, famous the “seismic societal shift” occurring because of the rise of AI and generative AI (GenAI), the subject of Hoover hearings held earlier this yr.

The suggestions embrace constructing a state-owned computing heart to help AI, in addition to offering the state’s workforce with general-purpose AI instruments and conducting AI coaching, procurement and oversight actions.

Nava wrote that the overarching theme is “the idea that AI innovation can’t be a top-down enterprise, however ought to as an alternative draw on the collective ardour, creativity and variety of California’s state staff and, certainly, all Californians in search of to make our state a greater place to dwell.”

The chief abstract for the 54-page report cites these three key suggestions and several other others:

• Construct a California AI Computing Heart: “California ought to develop its personal state-run, cloud-based AI computing heart to supply reasonably priced, scalable entry to compute energy, AI instruments and datasets for state businesses, educational establishments, non-profits, and startups.” Particularly, it will present customers with entry to “compute energy and AI improvement instruments, software program and datasets which may in any other case be insufficiently safe and/or price prohibitive.”
• Create a California AI Council, which might, amongst different issues, oversee the creation of the AI computing heart.
• Empower State Employees: “California ought to present all state staff with entry to safe general-purpose GenAI instruments together with necessary primary GenAI coaching. The state must also facilitate peer-to-peer and self-directed GenAI trainings tailor-made to the distinctive wants of its particular person staff and applications.”
• Make Implementation Simpler: “The state ought to facilitate GenAI innovation with out growing company workloads by clarifying GenAI use insurance policies, supporting inter-agency and intergovernmental collaboration, figuring out company wants and piloting and scaling GenAI purposes throughout businesses.”
• Enhance Procurement and Danger Evaluation: “The state’s present procurement and risk-mitigation processes for GenAI must be streamlined as a lot as attainable with out compromising security.”
• Strengthen Human Employee Voices: “The state should steadiness leveraging GenAI whereas sustaining a powerful human presence in its operations. It might obtain this, partially, via common boards, company place statements and the creation of an AI ombudsperson.”
• Educating the Public: “To persuade Californians of the worth, security and harmlessness of GenAI in authorities operations, the state ought to take steps to teach the general public about the way it intends to implement GenAI and defend towards GenAI hurt.”
• Legislative Oversight: “The California Legislature ought to set up a ‘Choose Committee on California Public Sector AI’ to supervise AI/GenAI implementation in state operations. It must also interact in self-education referring to AI/GenAI know-how and coverage.”
• California Should Suppose Past AI: “California’s present concentrate on GenAI is just too slim. The state ought to increase its GenAI procurement and risk-mitigation insurance policies and types to incorporate all applied sciences which have vital danger, not simply GenAI.”

The Little Hoover Fee isn’t late to the AI dialogue; in 2018, it revealed a report known as Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for California.

This week’s deep dive by the fee notes a number of components associated to the expansion of AI in state, native and federal governments, together with Newsom’s adoption of RFI2 (Request for Revolutionary Concepts), a challenge-based procurement technique that has been embraced by among the state’s largest businesses and departments.

On the legislative entrance, the report notes the burgeoning regulatory setting that has sprung up in recent times: “In California, previous to the 2017-18 legislative session, few if any payments referring to AI had been launched. AI laws then started to speed up, with 5 payments showing in 2017-18, 16 in 2019-20, and 13 in 2021-22. ChatGPT was launched in late 2022 and, in 2023-24, a exceptional 67 payments on AI had been proposed within the California Legislature.”