Maryland’s new Artificial Intelligence advisor starts as legislator calls for privacy law

A veteran in the field of artificial intelligence over parts of four decades pointed to several everyday uses of the technology already — from use in Apple’s Siri voice recognition system to GPS navigation systems, even to robotic vacuum cleaners like Roomba.

“What really changed, in my view,” said Ming Lin, now a distinguished university professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park, “is the compute power and it’s the data source.”

With applications of generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT — a tool that uses large language models to simulate a human response and produce text — having gobbled up data, at least one state legislative leader is calling for Maryland to join a dozen other states with laws to protect citizens’ data and personal information.

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“Hopefully we will pass comprehensive data privacy legislation this year in the state of Maryland,” said state Sen. Katie Fry Hester, D-Howard/Montgomery, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Biotechnology, during a Nov. 29 committee meeting on the topics of “modernization, AI, and cybersecurity.”

The state’s new senior adviser for responsible artificial intelligence, in attendance too at the meeting, also nodded towards privacy, but stopped short of explicitly calling for a new law.

“Privacy will have to be one of the key values that we center a lot of this work around,” said Nishant Shah, hired to the role in August from a position at Facebook’s parent company, Meta.

In a subsequent phone interview discussing the technology, Shah said when it comes to artificial intelligence, the state is “at the very starting line right now.”

‘There’s been very little AI use so far’

Shah, who also indicated during the hearing that he previously worked at Amazon, pointed to the work he has been doing since starting the new role in state government.

“We’ve been drawing upon published and emerging researching guidance, which includes documents like the federal AI executive order,” said Shah, referencing the late October directive signed by President Joe Biden.

Shah’s direct supervisor, Secretary of the Maryland Department of Information Technology Katie Savage, who came to the Moore administration from the U.S. Department of Defense, said: “We’re trying to be lockstep with what the Biden administration is doing.”

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But while the federal government earlier this year released a list of over 700 use cases of artificial intelligence, ranging from applications with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s crop data to applications designed to check the accuracy of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs records, the state, so far, has lagged behind.

“Generally, outside of a handful of use cases, there’s been very little AI use so far,” Shah told the committee, relaying the results of a survey of state agencies that took place earlier this year and mentioning chatbots as one AI tool already in use. “We’ll need to sort of spend some time helping agencies understand the art of the possible.”

A report released in November from the state government in California, home to 35 of the world’s top 50 generative artificial intelligence companies, showed six categories of beneficial use cases, including improving “communications access in multiple languages and formats.”

‘It’s a challenging social issue, it’s not just for the technologists’

Shah, the man tasked with overseeing Maryland’s strategy for artificial intelligence, indicated both long- and short-term action items for the state.

“In order to ensure that Maryland can leverage AI effectively in the longer term,” he said, “we need to increase AI knowledge and skills across state government.”

In the subsequent phone interview, Shah indicated training for employees on artificial intelligence would be provided at some point, “likely in partnership with some external entity.”

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In the short-term, Shah spoke to the committee of “clear guardrails” and guidance for use of generative artificial intelligence in state government, a “clear approach” to procuring artificial intelligence tools and providing help to state agencies in identifying uses for artificial intelligence.

He also indicated in the Dec. 4 interview translating information into different languages may be one use of artificial intelligence by the state's government. Shah also cited the use of the technology, in conjunction with sensors, in order to monitor wildfires as a potential use. Another important benefit to state government of artificial intelligence may be enhanced citizen service as agencies use artificial intelligence tools to improve processes.

“Incremental improvements in efficiency and productivity within those (state) agencies essentially, become benefits directly to residents because it becomes easier, faster, better, to provide service on a timely basis,” he said.

First, as told Shah the committee, the foundation for all of the technology’s uses must be articulated.

“We’re working on finalizing a set of values in the coming weeks,” Shah said.

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During the marathon, three-plus hour meeting held online via Zoom, the state senator, Hester, citing privacy, indicated that more is needed than written down values.

“Privacy can be a value,” she said, “but unless we put resources and capacity behind a value, it’s just on paper.”

The same day the committee in Maryland met, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators met in the nation's capital regarding the technology. Those meetings followed talks earlier in the month on AI between Biden and the Chinese president on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative conference in California.

During a Nov. 28 phone interview, Lin, the Maryland professor who has been working in the field of artificial intelligence since she was a graduate student in the late 1980s, said more than simply tech experts are required when dealing within the worldwide arena of artificial intelligence.

“It’s a challenging social issue,” she said, “it’s not just for the technologists.”

Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Maryland is at 'starting line,' artificial intelligence advisor says