On this episode of “In Case You Missed It,” Dustin and Joe speak with Chris Hein, Google’s director of customer engineering for public sector/SLED, whose job involves determining how the technologies and innovations that Google has come up with might be applicable to government — making him an ideal guest to discuss the real-world uses cases for AI in the public sector.
He noted that many of the things government is doing with AI are a natural outgrowth of what they’ve been working on for years, such as using natural language processing to create chatbots/virtual agents and processing documents much faster than can be done manually. But he also pointed out the equitable benefits of AI as related to serving constituents with different needs, whether that’s because of speaking different languages or having auditory or visual difficulties. Finally, he mentioned that, apart from adding AI at the “edges,” jurisdictions are also starting to consider what it might look like to completely rebuild existing systems with AI at the core.
As with all technologies, AI shouldn’t be considered “magic fairy dust” to be sprinkled on every problem in hopes of immediately fixing them. Agencies need to clearly determine and articulate the benefits that AI could have, and should work to place the technology in the hands of employees so they can explore (in safe, protected environments) and unlock what is possible moving forward. And governments need to be loud and vocal in sharing both their successes and their failures to provide transparency, build trust with the public and articulate what worked and didn’t work.
While agreeing that a metrics-based evaluation of technology services is understandable, Hein thinks that expecting a perfect success rate is unreasonable and such expectations can be holding agencies back. He would ask the public sector to evaluate how accurate their current workforce is at certain tasks and if AI can help improve that. The ultimate question is not “Does the technology work 100 percent of the time?” but “Is the status quo better than what GenAI is offering?”
LEARN MORE
- Discover Google AI for the Public Sector
- Connect with Chris Hein on LinkedIn
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In Case You Missed It is Government Technology’s weekly news roundup and interview live show featuring e.Republic* President Dustin Haisler and Chief Innovation Officer Joe Morris as they bring their analysis and insight to the week’s most important stories in state and local government.
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