Getting to Know GenAI
By: Arthur Higbee, Managing Director & Rob Breakiron, Managing Director
We are hearing so much lately about generative AI (GenAI). It’s important to understand this new innovation and how today’s government agencies can harness its power while managing risk.
How did GenAI grab center stage?
ChatGPT 3.5 launched on November 30, 2022 ushering in the public to GenAI. While AI is not new — after all, IBM-enabled Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in chess in 1997 — ChatGPT and other generative AI models are very different from the machine-learning models of the past 50 years that are used to make predictions. GenAI uses neural networks inspired by our brain and learns how to create new data.
Initially ChatGPT looked familiar – similar to other models that autocomplete our texts or frustrate us when we try to chat with customer service –but this is an entirely new kind of intelligence that is advancing far faster than we expected. Just this year, GenAI models have not only become more knowledgeable and more precise in their creation of data, but have learned to see and create images, hear and speak to us, and have started to use tools, such as searching the Internet and using calculators.
GenAI is uniquely capable of communicating with us and with machines. Before this year, if you wanted to put a machine to work for you, you had to learn its language or learn the ins and outs of its software. Now you can talk to ChatGPT and it will start to do work for you. Technology companies have recognized the power of this ability and we will soon see ChatGPT and other large language models essentially become the user interface of their products.
When is the right time to get started?
Now is the time for state agencies to form their GenAI strategies, plans, and working groups. Agency leaders are already being flooded with requests from technology companies to demonstrate these powerful new tools and government employees are using ChatGPT in their daily lives.
As a result, GenAI is poised to become ubiquitous with the potential of serving almost as a new operating system for our technology. We need to explore the technology responsibly by bringing the models in house for safety and security, identifying data sets to optimize the models, and developing uses that will strengthen our workforce and advance government service delivery.
What is GenAI?
Generative AI, a groundbreaking technology, creates new content—from text to images—by learning from vast data sets. It's reshaping creativity and problem-solving across industries, offering both exciting opportunities and ethical challenges in its ability to mimic human capabilities.