June 2023: AI: Are Homo Sapiens the New Homo Erectus?

Go to a conference these days and the chatter is all about ChatGPT - a version of artificial intelligence. A few weeks ago I was at the California Association of Public Information Officers (CAPIO) Annual Conference in Monterey. Over 500 attendees were there representing communicators from special districts, cities, counties and more. The buzz at the conference was mostly about a session led by a team from the City of Yorba Linda.

The Yorba Linda team shared how they started testing out ChatGPT for “fun” (true government nerds) to determine how effectively the tool could draft content for a speech (and yes, they disclosed to the appropriate people that they were using the tool). Fundamentally, ChatGPT cut hours off the speech drafting process and got it to about 85% done. The rest required a competent human to intervene, but that human saved a ton of time while flexing their very specialized local knowledge to add value to the speech. Throughout the Yorba Linda presentation, they peppered it with examples of test content it generated. Finally, they concluded by running some hot scenarios from the crowded room to see what it could generate. It did well enough to elicit oohs and ahhs from the audience.?

It was like we were early mankind and had just discovered fire.

As we have seen in media coverage, people with very big brains are concerned about artificial intelligence and its impact on our world. Some see it as the early stage of ‘Skynet’ that will lead to a global war of tech against humans. Others are more concerned with the economic upheaval it could generate as it disintermediates jobs. Some see risk in its capacity to dumb down society as we rely on algorithms to think for us, and as such, we become dependent upon computers and their potentially biased wisdom and responses.

This content space is not where these concerns will be resolved, but I can affirm that Tripepi Smith has been tracking the impact of artificial intelligence on our work as a communications firm and a more general viewpoint of its impact on local government. Our efforts are focused on ethical considerations, efficiency gains, tool capability evaluation and how to add value most effectively as a firm in the era of AI.?

The only primary conclusion I have made so far is that these tools are going to change how we do our work - the degree to which is unclear - but that change will require Tripepi Smith to do something we are quite capable of: adapting. The pandemic caused all of us in local government (and certainly beyond) to make changes in how we do business and deliver services. Agencies that shifted quickly were able to weather the changes and, in some ways, come out stronger or more resilient for it. Remaining open to doing things differently, being humble enough to know you don’t have all the answers and being smart enough to know how to change will all help win the day in the AI era.

The uptake and interest in artificial intelligence tools are unprecedented. People are flocking to test or use the platforms. It is driving big swings in stocks. It is threatening Google’s search dominance. The disruption is real. Prepare to adapt.

Onward,

Ryder

PS - I did?not?use ChatGPT to write this letter.