Town of San Jose is setting a precedent within the public sector’s adoption of synthetic intelligence, with Mayor Matt Mahan overtly integrating AI instruments like ChatGPT into day-to-day governance and coverage work.
From drafting speeches for ribbon-cutting ceremonies to serving to form the town’s $5.6 billion annual funds, Mahan and his crew have embraced generative AI as a time-saving instrument that reduces administrative burden. “Elected officers do an amazing quantity of public talking,” mentioned Mahan. “You may knock out these duties at the same or higher degree of high quality in rather a lot much less time.”
The mayor’s workplace is just not alone on this digital transformation. San Jose has already spent over $35,000 on 89 ChatGPT licenses, priced at $400 every, for metropolis workers, with ambitions to coach 1,000 workers (round 15 per cent of its workforce) in AI purposes by subsequent 12 months. These instruments are getting used for all the pieces from organising pothole complaints and rerouting buses to helping in felony investigations utilizing surveillance information.
AI has not solely been a strategic device for inner paperwork but in addition a sensible asset in securing funding. Andrea Arjona Amador, who leads electrical mobility initiatives for San Jose’s Division of Transportation, used ChatGPT to assist safe a $12 million grant for EV charging infrastructure. She created a customized AI agent to handle deadlines, organise correspondence, and even help in writing the prolonged grant proposal. “We used to spend evenings and weekends pushing grants to completion,” she mentioned. “This modified the sport.”
Amador, fluent in Spanish and French earlier than studying English, has additionally developed one other AI agent to fine-tune the tone and readability of her skilled writing, streamlining communication throughout departments.
Regardless of the keenness, Mahan stays cautious. “You continue to want a human being within the loop,” he mentioned. “You may’t simply press a few buttons and belief the output. Unbiased verification, logic, and customary sense nonetheless matter.”
San Jose’s efforts are a part of a broader development throughout the Bay Space. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie just lately introduced a plan to supply Microsoft’s AI assistant, Copilot, to almost 30,000 metropolis staff. The rollout contains clear moral tips and privateness safeguards to stop misuse.
Whereas San Jose has not reported any severe points with its pilot programmes, different jurisdictions haven’t been as lucky. In Fresno, a college official resigned after counting on an AI-generated doc that turned out to be inaccurate. Equally, the US Well being Secretary’s workplace confronted scrutiny over an AI-assisted publication riddled with errors.
Elsewhere, cities like Stockton have experimented with extra superior AI brokers able to performing duties comparable to calendar bookings and park reservations. Nevertheless, Stockton in the end shelved its plans, citing excessive prices. Gartner, a world market analysis agency, has predicted that over 40 per cent of agentic AI initiatives may very well be cancelled by 2027 as a result of monetary and operational challenges.
Nonetheless, Mahan stays optimistic about AI’s capability to modernise municipal features. “There’s a tremendous quantity of paperwork that giant organisations should handle,” he mentioned. “Whether or not it’s HR, accounting or grant writing, these are the roles the place AI could make our workforce 20 to 50 per cent extra productive, in a short time.”
With deep ties to main Silicon Valley companies comparable to OpenAI and Google, San Jose’s strategy may turn into a mannequin for native governments searching for to steadiness innovation with accountability within the digital age.
