Pete Buttigieg has boring ideas for AI. But like many politicians, he’s thinking practically.
Earlier this year, on a visit to Pittsburgh that included a Q&A with college students at Carnegie Mellon University, the Transportation Secretary dished on the Boeing blowout and drew hope from fatherhood before delving briefly into CMU’s signature technology: artificial intelligence.
Mr. Buttigieg admitted that his vision for the much-hyped computer tool wasn’t exactly sexy.
Emails made the list, along with other administrative tasks.
If applied to driverless cars, maybe cities could gain some space by eliminating parking spots, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., mused.
That a chief Biden administration official would have such simple, utilitarian uses for AI — a technology already used by nearly every Fortune 500 company — shows just how quickly ChatGPT and its cousin products have been normalized.
“Who’s on team hopeful?” Mr. Buttigieg asked the audience at CMU. More than half raised their hands.
“I hope you’re right,” he said.
The 2020 presidential candidate noted that his boss and former rival, Joe Biden, has endorsed AI.
Last fall, under pressure to keep up with his European counterparts, Mr. Biden circulated one of the largest executive orders ever written, urging every federal department to explore the potential pitfalls and promise of artificial intelligence.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a rising star in the Democratic party, also has tried to be a leader in AI. Last fall he signed his own executive order, establishing a committee that chose OpenAI as its first commercial client.
Through a $108,000 pilot, Pennsylvania employees are to start using ChatGPT to speed up administrative tasks, much like Mayor Pete suggested.
I’ve reported for the Post-Gazette on the makeup of this Pennsylvania AI committee. Nobody on it is an expert in AI. But they don’t see that as a problem. In interviews shortly after their promotion, the senior administration officials said very few people actually have expertise in generative AI — the latest iteration and the brains behind ChatGPT, which, if you’ve never tried it, is already smart enough to draft A+ English papers in a matter of minutes.
Pennsylvania, like many private companies, has said ChatGPT won’t replace human workers.
But after a year of rapid introduction to companies as storied and set in their ways as PPG and U.S. Steel, the new tagline for ChatGPT and other generative AI tech seems to be: Get with the program, or fall behind.
And that could be a big problem for parts of Western Pennsylvania that are still waiting for a far more basic technology: Wi-Fi.
When Mr. Shapiro’s digital strategy director Annie Newman came to Pittsburgh last fall for an AI conference at Duquesne University, she and other panelists noted that you can’t start talking about AI with rural Pennsylvanians without first addressing the issue of broadband.
That technological gulf likely will widen unless intentional efforts are made to train people and help them adapt.
But it should be said: Training can be fun.
When I first discovered ChatGPT in December 2022, I wrote poetry and movie scripts, casting my friends by feeding the website character traits like “lazy” and “insightful.”
As our first year with ubiquitous AI took shape, we saw so much creativity from people messing around with the new, free tool. Once it gained the ability to create images, the sharing only grew. Perhaps you saw some circulating the internet. And yes, perhaps they freaked you out.
But at least there’s more beyond the emails and administrative tasks. We’re going to see far more uses for generative AI in 2024.
Have an AI question? Contact tech reporter Evan Robinson-Johnson at ejohnson@post-gazette.com or on X @sightsonwheels.
First Published: March 11, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: March 11, 2024, 4:56 p.m.
