Generative AI creeps into Los Angeles city government

The Los Angeles city government announced on Wednesday that all of its computer-using staff, some 27,500 workers, will begin using Google’s generative AI business tools — and it was just a matter of time, said Ted Ross, the city’s chief information officer.

Ross said LA led a small pilot project to test Google Workspace with Gemini, with about 100 city staff, but he never thought there was much chance the city wouldn’t more widely adopt artificial intelligence software for its daily operations.

“We were always planning to expand and go big with it,” he said in a video interview from an event Google held in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. “In LA, I think it’s quite clear, AI is going to transform everyone’s work. So we need everyone to be fluent, we need everyone to be familiar, we need everyone to utilize these tools, because it will affect accountants and managers and analysts and secretaries, you name it.”

According to its press materials, the city plans initially to use the productivity suite to “transform” how it communicates with residents. The city has already used Google tools to rewrite some of its website copy “at a ninth-grade level,” and Ross it’ll also tap AI to deliver content in foreign languages. (More than 200 languages are spoken in LA, according to the Census Bureau.)

The city is also planning to boost worker productivity, perhaps the most commonly cited use of generative AI, by automating repetitive or text-heavy tasks, like searching grant documents for funding opportunities.

Someday, Ross said, he hopes to see AI enable more machine-to-machine communication, “to make rapid adjustments in the way traffic lights and signals work so that you can optimize people and mobility.” He also hoped that AI tools might help reduce the city’s use of electricity, by switching off lights and air conditioners when they’re not needed — “I think AI fits well in the complex optimization conversation.”

At the same event Wednesday, the Maryland state government updated the public on its recent use of Google’s AI tools. The state counts 12,500 “active users,” and 43,000 staff who have access to the AI-powered Google suite. Workers are using the tools to more quickly design websites, create chatbots and write talking points for presentations.

Lauren Maffeo, a senior AI and machine learning program manager at Maryland’s technology bureau, said the first six months of using Google’s AI tools have made employees much more productive, which she said is a good measure of the technology’s efficacy.

“They are able to do more work in less time, get faster results, reduce the cognitive load of having to remember manual processes,” she said.

With all the hype around AI, she said the state must “be really prudent” about its technology purchases, but that Google’s tools are proving valuable. She cited a case in which an agency was approached by a vendor to resolve an issue related to project management for clean water programs. The deal would have cost the state $400,000 and taken eight months to complete. Instead, she said, the state used the Gemini tools it already owned and completed the work in five weeks.

In both Los Angeles and Maryland, training is a key piece of their AI initiatives. Maffeo pointed to Maryland’s “community of practice” virtual meetings, which she said have grown in participation in recent months to about 150 attendees. The Maryland Department of Information Technology also holds “office hours,” she said, which are used by many different types of workers to understand how they can add AI to their workdays.

In Los Angeles, Ross said, he’s optimistic about the future of the technology for many applications, though not all. While he’s bullish on using it to reach a greater chunk of the city’s multicultural residents, he said he’s not interested in facial recognition for public safety. The city employs about 50,000 people, but the training and new digital offerings are for now only offered to those who regularly use digital devices. Caretakers and gardeners won’t get access, for instance. But if Google ever adds AI to safety goggles and gardening shears? “Then,” he joked, “we’re expanding to 50,000, baby.”