Launch of PublicSectorAI.tech website
The companion website to this newsletter, PublicSectorAi.tech, has launched. While it's currently pretty bare bones, it spells out in some detail what we really hope to achieve here:
I think the right format for the newsletter and for this site is for the newsletter to focus more on 'state of AI / public sector'; and for this site may be more 'what you can do' / 'how you can think about' AI.
There's also a reading list, which is primarily ethics-focused at the moment, but will be expanded in time to include more resources.
There's an RSS feed for the site, and one for this newsletter, for those of you who don't like email.
We also kick off with a 'what is generative AI?' post that's really targeted at helping lay-person public servants understand what is being asked of us.
Understanding what other agencies are planning to do with it, are doing with it, like Department of Homeland Security with their push into generative AI and their plan to 'hire an AI corps' and 'use chatbots'; they expect to publish their results in December, which will be an important milestone.
There's also the first version of a 'questions to ask' post, which will hopefully form the basis for a framework for public sector employees to 'ask questions of the tools, of vendors, and of officials and of each other' before jumping into an exciting AI project.
Also read the post for hot takes, such as:
If my five years of public service have taught me anything, it's that our jobs are never about using the latest technology: it's always about using stable and safe technology, as far as possible, to deliver services that the public needs. Our jobs are not to use AI or to be AI researchers or experts, but if down the line, the field has proven itself so thoroughly that it's a vital part of our work, then it will be one of many tools we use.
And we call for greater involvement in AI work by so-called 'non-technical' public servants, such as:
Personally, I also suspect that for any push towards generative AI to be truly successful, we will need to expand our definition of AI professionals to also include so-called 'non-technical people'. Program managers, who are domain experts in implementing government policies; content strategists and content designers, whose simplified language will (to my mind) beat any chatbot for information retrieval or at worst, assist future generative AI use cases by creating better structured content inputs in simple language; UX researchers, who should probably be consulted, and quite soon, as in yesterday, on user testing of these experiments.
Lastly, all posts there are open content that may be used anywhere, with citation and credit. They may also be edited on GitHub, if you feel we got anything wrong. Just click on the 'edit' link at the bottom of each post, such as this one.
In case you missed it, we sent out the first newsletter edition last week. Read it here.
Lastly, we are looking for collaborators: if you are a public sector employee who is also interested in, and concerned about, artificial intelligence and you have time and resources to help shape the direction of this site and newsletter, write to us: news@publicsectorai.tech.