AI Hustle: News on Open AI, ChatGPT, Midjourney, NVIDIA, Anthropic, Open Source LLMs: Unlocking Local Government's Potential: AI Integration with Prakhar Bajpai

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Of the hundreds of projects I've covered, this is the one that I believe has the greatest

potential, so today I'm excited to announce AIBOX.

AIBOX is a no-code AI app building platform paired with the App Store for AI that lets

you monetize your AI tools.

The platform lets you build apps by linking together AI models like chatGPT, mid-journey,

and 11Labs.

Eventually, we'll integrate with software like Gmail, Trello, and Salesforce so you

can use AI to automate every function in your organization.

To get notified when we launch and be one of the first to build on the platform, you

can join the wait list at AIBOX.AI, the link is in the show notes.

We are currently raising a seed round of funding.

If you're an investor that is focused on disruptive tech, I'd love to tell you more

about the platform.

You can reach out to me at jaden at AIBOX.AI, I'll leave that email in the show notes.

Kind of kicking it over, would you be able to tell everyone a little bit about what you

are currently working on over at the city of Austin?

I guess if you could share some of the interesting ways that you are looking at applying AI to

government work.

Thank you, Jaden, for that introduction.

I'm currently working as a senior data scientist at the city of Austin's Office of Innovation.

We are a small team of different kinds of data sets and skill sets that we bring.

My role in the team is basically working on the quantitative side of research and analytics.

Right now, we are holding a lot of different projects where we are trying to improve the

awareness of these newer technologies like data science and analytics, as well as artificial

intelligence and how it can be used especially in context of local government.

In my opinion, artificial intelligence and all of these emerging technologies are pretty

crucial in making the government more transparent and accountable.

So I always feel that we need to make the government services more efficient, more accessible

to the public, and then it is also a great tool to improve the how government communicate

with the public.

A very great example, you are seeing a lot of chatbots at different places throughout

the government settings as now as well.

So basically where you are seeing that the daily activities where people used to go and

maybe go to a portal, pay their bills, now it is being used, the chatbots are being used

to automate that process and making sure that it is effective and making it more accessible

to the public.

So very good technology, that's pretty good.

Very cool.

I do like that.

That's a cool concept to be able to use like a chatbot to help you through your portal.

I know for a lot of things government related, like I'm just thinking of myself over here,

I believe it's through like my city's government website that I like, pay my electric and gas

bills and that kind of stuff, and sometimes there's really confusing things in there I

can't figure out.

So having those chatbot experiences for that kind of stuff, I think could definitely be

like a beneficial to customers, but also I think this is beneficial to the city itself

and being able to perhaps alleviate some of the work that customer service reps and

that kind of have those kind of people have.

What are some of the unique challenges of implementing AI in a government setting, do

you think?

That's such a great question.

So I think the two big things of implementing any AI product or technologies in my opinion,

the data should be reliable and then data should be accurate.

I always think that these two things are the basic pillars of making any AI projects or

any tools and technologies.

So making sure that your data is reliable, you don't have any ethical issues connected

with the data, the data should be up to date, and then it should be the format of the data

should be in a particular way that any AI technologies can be used.

So like data standards, data governance and all of these things are pretty important,

especially from the data, local government perspective, because we have a lot of data.

So every city connects and owns a lot of data, but what is important is to have that reliability

and availability and making sure again, going back to the first point that you raised that

it should be transparent and the trust of the public should be maintained with whatever

tools and technologies we are building.

So I think these are some of the great examples.

So reliability, accessibility, I believe are like the two basic challenges of using any

AI tool in the government city.

Okay.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Definitely some unique challenges there.

You mentioned talking about data management and whatnot.

I'd be curious to pick your brain on how do you approach data management and pipeline

development to ensure the success of AI projects at the city of Austin?

So I think like the first step even on this data management should be to define the data

strategy.

Okay.

So data strategy can differ based on the type of organization.

So for the city government or any kind of the government setting, I think it is important

to have the principles and practices to ensure how data is connected, how it is stored, managed

and then used.

So it has, you always have to consider those factors while you are doing any kind of data

management.

The second, for example, city of Austin has its own open data portal.

They have a comprehensive inventory of different kinds of data assets it owns.

So this is usually accessible by the general public.

It has a big catalog which I can identify and manage all the data assets.

It can go download, create some visualizations on your own and then city of Austin especially

owns a lot of different types of tools and technologies within the company which is being

used to create better platforms like Tableau, we have Power BI, we have a lot of our housing

department use ArcGIS or all of these tools and technologies I believe are pretty important

to make sure that we are having that data management aspect.

And then the second point of your question on the pipeline development, I think just

making sure that we have the back end process intact in maybe the latest stage of the podcast.

I'm going to talk about a project which we recently did at Innovation Office where I

can give you an example of how important it is to have that data pipeline stored.

So again, a good team of data engineers, good mix of data engineers, data scientists, data

analysts is very important to make sure that you have this life cycle process intact in

terms of any data project you have.

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Specifically, something I'd be curious in asking you about is what do you kind of see

the role that AI is playing in making governments more transparent and accountable?

This is something you talked about a little bit at the beginning.

You mentioned that it has this ability but like what role do you see AI really playing

in that?

So I think they can be like multi-faceted approach to this.

So I gave you an example of a chatbot making the government services more accessible to

the general public.

That's an example.

They can be a lot of natural language processing.

And what it does that can be used to basically understand text and speeches.

We get a lot of council member meetings.

We get a lot of inside citywide meetings that are conducted so we can do a lot of

natural language processing there.

Again, predictive analytics is a factor to understand and see what impact the different

events can get.

Another example, very local to Austin.

We got a big no storm in 2021.

No one was ready for it.

So we got a lot of issues with that.

Now how data can be used to understand the kind of impact and making sure that we are

ready if there is any kind of such event in the future.

That can also be like a good example of how AI can be used.

A risk assessment again, security, making sure that we are ready for any kind of fraudulent

or any kind of bad thing happening with the data as well as like in general the city services.

It cannot AI can be used there and then public access make it easier.

In the recent, the conference that I recently attended as a company where there was a device

where it was like a glass which you can hear and then you can in real time see the translation

of someone speaking to you in a different language.

For example, if you are talking to me in English and let's say I am a native Spanish speaker

and getting the real time translation in front of my eye, which can help me in like better

translating to you rather than me holding a phone in my hand asking you to say something,

translate it, read it and then speaking it.

So I think these types of technologies are pretty great, especially from the government

perspective of how it can affect like the residents of the city.

Very cool.

Okay.

That's super cool.

You know, you mentioned this just before this talking about some specifics.

I would love to hear them.

I'm wondering if you could share maybe a specific project where AI has been, you know, has had

a significant impact and, you know, you mentioned like chatbots and whatnot, but perhaps there's

other areas.

I'm wondering if you have any interesting specific projects you've been working on.

Yeah.

So I can talk about a very recent project that we have done here at City of Austin.

So I led a project called Neighborhood Prosperity Dashboard, which is basically a neighborhood

level decision support tool that shows the current state of multiple prosperity related

practice.

And again, it is on a neighborhood level scale.

So pretty zoomed in understanding of how residents in different parts of Austin are

thriving.

It incorporates an index of more than 80 different data variables across the five big categories

economics, health, education, civic engagement, as well as social justice.

So basically with that, with that dashboard, you get to see the state of neighbors and

neighborhood so that different city departments can use it to operationalize their resources.

It is being used a lot here at City of Austin to make a lot of important policy decisions.

We are right now in the process of reaching out to different city departments and promoting

it so that they can include it as a part of their daily operations so they can do it,

use it to allocate resources or developing new services for the city.

And then the platform that we created going back to the initial point I said about the

pipeline development, the tool that we created was a lot of data.

And then in the back end, it also is made with the fact that it can update whenever

there is a new data set available.

Okay.

And then in terms of reliability, we have used data sets from a lot of different data

sources since as being one of one, we have some of our own local data.

We got data from CDC's website.

We got some data from the state of Texas, some data from the Travis County.

So it's a collection of different types of data.

And we are making sure that once the data becomes available, we are able to update the

dashboard to show the latest information.

Very, very cool.

Wow.

What an interesting project.

You know, working on some of these really interesting projects, I'd be curious,

you know, what advice would you give to other cities looking to implement AI and their governmental

operations?

I think that that's again, that's a great question.

I think the first part of starting with any kind of such projects is to have a clear understanding

of your goals.

So what, what are you trying to achieve with implementing?

Let's say, do you have mere understanding of your goals?

And then do you have buy-in from your stakeholders, stakeholders being both the city staff, the

executive leadership, as well as the residents?

You need that buy-in from all different parties.

And then some suggestions that, that I would make to the city.

That's small.

You don't have to start with like a very big city-wide project.

That's small.

Create a prototype, see if they have usability.

And then the second point is be transparent.

Be transparent in front of the city residents or other like whatever your customer is or

what you are doing, what kind of data you are using and what is the end goal of that project.

And then lastly, but very important, be responsible.

I think you have to use AI in a responsible and ethical way, which what, what does it mean

that you have to be fair, unbiased and transparent.

And then you also have to make sure that you are protecting the privacy of the citizens.

Yeah, that makes, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And I think that is really, really good advice.

Something I'd be curious on asking you about is, you know, as you're kind of working and

implementing this, you're kind of on the forefront of AI and government work right now.

I feel like you're doing some really impressive things.

I'm wondering, what are some emerging trends in AI that you think are going to have a, you know,

significant impact on government services in the next few years?

I think, I think hearing that question, the first thing comes to my mind is

Generative AI, you are seeing it everywhere now.

I think, uh, Chajipati made a record of most number of users in a short amount of time,

like ever, it is like the most used app.

So again, Generative AI is the first one.

It is very transparent.

It is very transformative.

If you again, use it ethically and use it in a responsible way,

it can improve your, uh, communication, your document creation and service delivery.

What I usually tell it to people who ask me question, should I use Generative AI that, uh,

you can use it, but use it for the repetitive task and not for something, uh, where you have

to back that with the data because again, the release, uh, these tools and Generative AI platforms

are changing, but they are still lagging a lot in terms of like giving out the,

exact and current data set.

So I would say for that, Generative AI is great.

Again, Responsible AI is again an important point.

So developing any AI model in a responsible and ethical way, uh, protect the privacy of your

citizens, uh, recognize the need of adopting these Responsible AI practices.

And then I'm thinking this is going to be a trend that is going to be here for some time

in the next future as well.

Another fact, another, uh, aspect or approach that I'm thinking is going to take over in

the next few years is the Multi-Modern AI.

So basically when you are going to, uh, bring like images, as well as like the structured

data together and create some tools based on that.

So for example, when you have like, like an NPD, for example, that, that, uh,

Neighborhood Prosperity Dashboard, I gave you an example, right?

Not as being backed by the data is what if we also bring the, uh,

feedback from the community is living, actually living in those neighborhoods.

What if we can bring some kind of documentation, some kind of tech features,

feedback from people and try to implement it?

Chatbot is again an example of Multi-Modern AI where you are bringing

all the processes into a form of a text-based, uh, software.

So it can help you gain that understanding.

And I would say this is going to be something which is being used a lot on

across the domains, not only in government, but also in private organizations too.

That is so fascinating.

It's been incredible to have you on the podcast.

You shared some incredible insights, um, advice and also some trends you see.

If, you know, people are interested in contacting you, perhaps people that are

also working on implementing AI into local governments or just other areas,

what is a good way for people to, uh, you know, reach out to you to find you?

Oh, again, I think the best way is to, uh, reach me on LinkedIn.

I'm here on LinkedIn at, uh, with my name.

And then if you want to learn more about, uh, in general about what we are doing at

City of Austin, I would suggest reaching out at innovation at AustinTexas.gov.

So I-N-N-O-V-A-T-I-O-N at AustinTexas.gov.

That would be a great place to start that conversation.

And I would encourage all of your listeners to come and check what we are doing,

give us the feedback, and then we can basically co-create any kind of, uh, product if you want.

Amazing. So fascinating.

Thank you so much for coming on the show today and to the listeners.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.