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 according to town’s latest launch of a “accountable AI plan,” which gives tips for Seattle’s use of synthetic intelligence and its help of the AI tech sector as an financial driver.
The CAIO will report back to Rob Lloyd, town’s chief expertise 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 non-public sector, federal authorities and academia.
Lloyd, who began as CTO final 12 months, mentioned the “very aggressive” applicant pool additionally features a few ex-Microsoft staff. A rent ought to be made by subsequent week.
“We created town AI plan [because] there’s numerous issues that occur with AI for a company to be efficient at it,” Lloyd instructed GeekWire. “We outlined a pair domains of exercise that we’ve got 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 underneath a coordinated technique. Lloyd mentioned success is determined by an “elite-level AI knowledgeable” to supervise frameworks, expertise, and coaching.
- Studying, skilling, and accountable adoption: With 39 departments, town should construct a shared understanding of AI use. The main focus is on stopping “AI product sprawl” and aligning options with metropolis priorities — equivalent to price range directives and government orders—whereas bettering AI literacy, constant terminology, and consciousness of AI’s influence on workflows and folks.
- Partnerships and neighborhood activation: The plan connects inner 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, town enhances each its capabilities and its function as a accountable neighborhood associate, Lloyd mentioned.
Using AI has the flexibility to reshape how quite a few metropolis departments do their work and serve residents. Lloyd pointed to adoption already underneath approach within the Seattle Division of Transportation, the place AI and sport concept are getting used to investigate areas with larger accident charges and discover patterns and anomalies in experiences and assist speed up design choices so secure intersections will be engineered.
Public utilities, public security and allowing are additionally ripe for AI disruption, Lloyd mentioned, however the strategy is to reinforce human staff, 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 sooner. We will take AI and deal with these issues, to not displace jobs, however to get to the service ranges and choice 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 problem a generative AI coverage within the fall of 2023. The town has insurance 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 particular expertise.
On the subject of the brand new AI officer and the AI plan, Lloyd burdened the significance of “ensuring that we deal with our values and the way we apply AI within the group and the neighborhood.”
The annual wage for the CAIO function is between $125,000 and $188,000, in response to the job posting.
Whoever comes away with the job will be part of a metropolis authorities that’s prepared and capable of work with numerous native “property,” as Lloyd known 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 could be a very unhappy factor if we didn’t reap the benefits of that chance and play to that power.”
