AI sandbox generates new solutions, talent pipeline in Massachusetts

Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Jason Snyder joins the latest episode of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast to break down a new program designed to spur innovative AI solutions in the state. Snyder says the project, which started last January, connects university students with difficult challenges facing state agencies. But he says not only has the program yielded an unexpected number of productive solutions to government problems, but it’s also impressed officials into hiring eight of the first participants. “The students developed an AI that just in using human language: ‘I want to build a bridge.’ And it would come back and list all the policy associated with it and provide the actual links to that policy and references so they could click on it and access it,” Snyder says on the podcast. “The commissioner was blown away and actually hired the two students that worked on that project.”

New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.

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