Does state-and-local AI need a rebrand?
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By
Chris Teale
President Donald Trump has proposed calling the tech “super intelligence,” but speakers at a recent conference said supporters should emphasize its efficiencies rather than worry about branding.
MINNEAPOLIS — In September, President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating that artificial intelligence be known as “super intelligence,” arguing that AI makes the technology sound fake and that so-called “SI” better reflects its immense capabilities.
While that executive order applies only to federal agencies and departments, and has already been adopted by some, the effort has some state and local leaders wondering if they should follow the federal government’s lead. That is especially true as they reckon with AI’s impacts on the government workforce, the future of work, service delivery and the backlash against data centers.
A rebrand might be tempting, and speakers at the Public Technology Institute’s GOVIT Leadership Summit and Symposium in Minneapolis this week said deemphasizing AI as a term might be an interesting path forward. But they also said government leaders should spend more time selling the technology and its benefits to the public, regardless of what it’s called.
“The reality is AI was here 50 years ago,” said John Matelski, chief information officer at the National Association of Counties, during a panel discussion. “We just called it machine learning or something else, so we're seeing these cycles. Now we have the [generative AI] future and those kinds of things. I've actually looked at this not as artificial intelligence, more as augmented intelligence… How do we leverage the varying types of technologies or services or those kinds of things, and recognize that it's here to stay? How do we embrace it carefully, and with boundaries on it? But I've never liked the term ‘artificial intelligence.’”
The backlash is real, however, and was illustrated last week as voters in numerous localities rejected ballot initiatives related to data centers, which provide the infrastructure AI operates on but have been blamed for rising energy costs and other impacts on local communities. PTI Senior Fellow Alan Shark suggested on stage that leaders instead be “talking about office automation,” and “talk about solutions and leave out the word ‘AI’ because that's a variable.”
“We have two universes,” Shark continued. “One is our internal, and we have to use a language that our people understand. The external, though, is I'm seeing AI as a negative term. People have a right to be fearful. We've had AI escaping, destroying systems, apologizing that it destroyed a system, and admitting that it actually failed to follow its own instructions. People have every right to be concerned. I'm just saying, I think we've got to be scared about what our public is seeing, and I think we should be using it very carefully.”
The rebrand has even extended to data centers themselves. Williamsburg, Virginia CIO Mark Barham said the government there has taken to calling them “co-location facilities,” and he knows that if leaders disclose they are meeting with data center vendors, “alarm bells go off” in the community.
And specific use cases for AI have caused headaches. Amy Cheney, Bloomington, Minnesota’s CIO, said her city has seen a dramatic uptick in people using AI to submit requests under the Freedom of Information Act, a use that has positive potential but can also produce complex requests requiring much more staff time and resources. Cheney said a lot of work lies ahead there.
“[FOIA requesters] are using AI against us basically to create these really complicated requests that our staff quite frankly cannot keep up with,” she said. “We're looking at how we automate that process. It doesn't necessarily involve AI. It might be something simpler, but I think that automation is the key, and getting staff to recognize AI isn't going away, but we have to figure out ways of being smarter and how we're addressing the demands we're seeing now.”
For some time, government leaders at the state and local level have argued that the messaging around AI should focus on how it helps make employees’ work easier and more efficient, and allows them to focus on more complex tasks. Those who work for small and rural governments have said previously that the technology has given them “breathing room,” and others argued that focusing on AI’s benefits will help sell it more to the public.
“You can call it AI, you can call it super intelligence, you can call it whatever you like, but it's efficiency that it's going to help create,” said Ben Bowen, vice president of U.S. sales at software company Claro Enterprise Solutions. “[OK], we can bring in some AI tools, but to be honest with you, it's just the efficiency. I don't want to say there's one broad stroke, don't say the word ‘AI,’ or the term ‘AI,’ or the letters ‘AI.’ But it's maybe how do we create efficiency within the worlds that we're all living in today?”