Austin City Council to look at city’s use of artificial intelligence

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Writing copy. Organizing data. Building models to predict trends. All things artificial intelligence can help us do. And it’s a topic Austin City Council members are turning their attention to Thursday.

“The University of Texas recently declared the year of AI this year, South by [Southwest] is around the corner, they have a lot of panels and discussions around AI. So this is an area where the City of Austin stands to lead when it comes to artificial intelligence,” said Austin City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes.

Fuentes introduced a resolution up for a vote Thursday that would ask the city manager to create clear guidelines and expectations for how the city uses AI. It would also ask him to look at ways the city can utilize the technology.

“What my item seeks to do is explore how the City of Austin as an employer integrates guardrails and protocols regarding integrating AI technology into the workflows of city processes as well as take a look at what more we can and should be doing with this type of technology,” she said.

Fuentes hopes the city will keep an eye on unintended outcomes — like plagiarism, bias and job displacement — in the process.

But Sharon Strover, a journalism and media professor at the University of Texas who has been working on the city with the proposal, points out those concerns are not as new as you might think.

“A lot of it is still at the crystal ball stage frankly. I think the efficiencies of AI are a huge attraction. But if we look back at the history of how organizations, institutions adopted the personal computer, there were those fears with the computer as well,” Strover said.