A picture of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell reviewing the city’s new AI policy. Caw caw. (Image: CHS AI Bot)
Seattle has released details of its new Generative Artificial Intelligence policy.
Don’t worry, red states. The liberal blue state bastion isn’t about to roll out an army of progressive AI robots. Yet.
Instead, the new policy sets mostly common sense guidelines for how city employees can use new AI technology that generate everything from text to photog-quality graphics. The city says the policy should give its workers “greater flexibility as technology evolves while ensuring it aligns with the city’s responsibility to serve residents.”
Officials say the new AI policy touches “on many aspects of generative AI.”
“It highlights several key factors to responsible use in a municipality, including attributing AI-generated work, having an employee review all AI work before going live, and limiting the use of personal information to help build the materials AI uses to develop its product,” a statement on the effort reads. “The policy also stipulates any work with a third-party vendor or tool must also include these principles for AI. This will help novel risks that have the potential to adversely affect the City’s ability to fulfill its legal commitments and obligations about how we use and manage data and information.”
The city says its new policy was developed in a six-month working period with a Generative AI Advisory Team and City Hall employees and was written by Seattle’s Interim Chief Technology Officer Jim Loter. The statement does not address whether Loter used AI to compile the policy. It does include seven “governing principles”
- Innovation and Sustainability
- Transparency and Accountability
- Validity and Reliability
- Bias and Harm Reduction and Fairness
- Privacy Enhancing
- Explainability and Interpretability
- Security and Resiliency
Seattle’s Generative AI Policy Advisory Team included “technology industry leaders” from the University of Washington, the Allen Institute for AI, and members of the City’s Community Technology Advisory Board (CTAB). Seattle Information Technology employees also provided input.
AI, meanwhile, continues to shape industries and economies with impacts large and small. This article was compiled utilizing a free, publicly available AI system.
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Why would the topic of AI ever be framed as a “red state” vs “blue state” issue?? Last time I checked, both parties were explicitly capitalist, and these AI “governing principles” would inevitably just serve to dictate how AI can and will be used to reduce the need for hiring workers. Cast whatever aspersions you’d like onto that statement, but anyone who is seriously investing in AI would agree it’s 100% about reducing the ‘inefficiencies’ of workers to maximize profit. Simple math.
I don’t think the city cares as much about people’s use of AI outside of a business context, though your ‘red vs blue’ dichotomy would suggest its adoption would be due to the political leanings of our city…i.e. Seattle is “liberal” so therefore it will be quicker to embrace AI–that makes absolutely no sense.
The reason red cities won’t be investing as much in AI is because they’re poor and ridden with crime due to a lack of tax base, and big companies with big money don’t invest there in the first place.