The capabilities of the technology have been feverishly bandied about since the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT bot last November. Alongside explorations of what the tool can do, and comparisons with similar offerings from Google and Microsoft, ChatGPT's sophisticated functionality has renewed concerns about the future of the workforce.
The answer to the "Are the robots coming for our [government IT] jobs?" question, for now, seems to be, "Not yet."
"I haven't seen any real concern from the workforce at this point," said Alaska CIO Bill Smith, making a point echoed by many of his peers: People with a deep understanding of government's mission must always retain ultimate decision-making authority.
"One of the cautions that I've got is as we're maturing this technology, we just want to be certain that we are not using it in areas where we don't have expertise," Smith said, noting that humans must always be responsible for quality control, using what they know to validate the information generated by the technology.
Virginia CIO Robert "Bob" Osmond views innovations like generative AI as tools that can augment what the technologists on his team do every day.
"We’re very much looking forward and seeing that as these innovations come out, there’s value to embrace them, to harness them, to apply them," Osmond said.
