The Metropolis of Seattle is interviewing candidates for a Metropolis AI Officer place to steer how synthetic intelligence is utilized throughout departments and places of work.
The brand new job is in keeping with the town’s recent release of a “responsible AI plan,” which gives tips for Seattle’s use of synthetic intelligence and its assist of the AI tech sector as an financial driver.
The CAIO will report back to Rob Lloyd, the town’s chief know-how officer, who mentioned the job posting attracted 3,000 visits within the first week it was stay. From roughly 40 extremely certified candidates, 9 are being invited to interview, with backgrounds starting from the personal sector, federal authorities and academia.
Lloyd, who started as CTO last year, mentioned the “very aggressive” applicant pool additionally features a few ex-Microsoft staff. A rent must be made by subsequent week.
“We created the town AI plan [because] there’s plenty of issues that occur with AI for a company to be efficient at it,” Lloyd informed GeekWire. “We outlined a pair domains of exercise that now we have to achieve success at.”
The CAIO will handle these domains, together with:
- Technical excellence and orchestration: The town’s AI plan ensures that infrastructure, programming, information, and course of engineering are aligned beneath a coordinated technique. Lloyd mentioned success depends upon an “elite-level AI knowledgeable” to supervise frameworks, know-how, and coaching.
- Studying, skilling, and accountable adoption: With 39 departments, the town should construct a shared understanding of AI use. The main target is on stopping “AI product sprawl” and aligning options with metropolis priorities — reminiscent of price range directives and govt orders—whereas bettering AI literacy, constant terminology, and consciousness of AI’s impression on workflows and folks.
- Partnerships and group activation: The plan connects inside AI efforts with academia, startups, and native organizations to strengthen Seattle’s AI ecosystem. By fostering collaboration and shared understanding round AI security and innovation, the town enhances each its capabilities and its position as a accountable group accomplice, Lloyd mentioned.
Using AI has the power to reshape how quite a few metropolis departments do their work and serve residents. Lloyd pointed to adoption already beneath approach within the Seattle Division of Transportation, the place AI and sport idea are getting used to research areas with increased accident charges and discover patterns and anomalies in studies and assist speed up design choices so secure intersections might be engineered.
Public utilities, public security and allowing are additionally ripe for AI disruption, Lloyd mentioned, however the strategy is to enhance human employees, not automate and displace them.
“There’s loads of house we will take a look at the place workers are overwhelmed,” he mentioned. “We’re not attending to the response degree that we aspire to, and there’s areas the place we need to make choices even smarter, even quicker. We will take AI and deal with these issues, to not displace jobs, however to get to the service ranges and resolution making that we need to create.”
Seattle has been a pacesetter in creating steerage for AI use, and claims to be the primary within the nation to difficulty a generative AI policy within the fall of 2023. The town has policies requiring “human-in-the-loop” oversight, the place staff should assessment generative AI outputs earlier than official use and attribute any AI-assisted work to the precise know-how.
In relation to the brand new AI officer and the AI plan, Lloyd pressured the significance of “ensuring that we deal with our values and the way we apply AI within the group and the group.”
The annual wage for the CAIO position is between $125,000 and $188,000, based on the job posting.
Whoever comes away with the job will be a part of a metropolis authorities that’s prepared and capable of work with plenty of native “property,” as Lloyd referred to as them, together with the College of Washington, AI Home, AI2, Plug & Play, and extra.
“We’re the second greatest epicenter of AI expertise,” he mentioned. “It might be a very unhappy factor if we didn’t benefit from that chance and play to that power.”
