Jennifer Harris, the county’s chief of media services, left, and George Jenkins, an information security officer, both co-chairs of a committee on AI policy development, brief the Charles commissioners on AI usage.
Jennifer Harris, the county’s chief of media services, left, and George Jenkins, an information security officer, both co-chairs of a committee on AI policy development, brief the Charles commissioners on AI usage.
Screenshot by Matt Wynn/Southern Maryland NewsArtificial intelligence is constantly evolving, so policy to address suitable uses in the workplace must as well.
Charles County’s commissioners heard a presentation from Jennifer Harris, the county’s chief of media services, and George Jenkins, an information security officer, who both co-chair a committee on AI policy development for the county.
“Generative AI is a powerful, time-saving tool,” Harris said. “We know particularly in the communications space, it helps you write 60% faster and 25% more accurately. … Does it replace people’s jobs? Not necessarily.”
Proposed policy would need to be responsible, ethical and secure.
“An analogy I often like to use is when the internet was introduced to the general public back in the mid ‘90s,” Jenkins said. “Having all that information readily available on a screen versus being in a library where you had stacks of books, papers and periodicals felt like going from a horse and buggy to an automobile.”
Harris said that various other policies were used in working on Charles County’s policy because “we don’t want to reinvent the wheel if we don’t have to.”
“Our work doesn’t end here. It’s really the beginning of the next phase,” Harris added.
The new AI policy would apply to all county staff that use it for business.
“We want to ensure that it aligns with Maryland guidance,” Harris said. “In the space I work in, we train all the time on the use of AI. Every six months, we’re doing three to four days solid of training with the Public Relations Society of America.”
She also mentioned that having a human proof reading all AI output is essential to the successful usage of various generative intelligences.
Jenkins said that employees will need department head approval to use AI for their job function.
“Charles County data needs to stay with the county,” Jenkins added.
He emphasized the need to check for generative AI bias in any given writing.
Commissioner Gilbert “BJ” Bowling (D) asked a question in response, trying to understand the bias in AI and if it is actively being found, because he was uncertain how something analytical like a computer could be “biased.”
According to IBM, AI can have bias because the data sets that produce answers to queries contain human sentiments.
“Historically biased data collection that reflects societal inequity can result in harm to historically marginalized groups in use cases including hiring, policing, credit scoring and many others,” IBM says about AI biases.
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