'Like it or not, we need to understand it,' Kincannon says about generative AI

WASHINGTON – Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon is leaping into the worldwide conversation about how best to harness the power of generative artificial intelligence – and how best to deploy it responsibly – at Bloomberg Philanthropy's CityLab conference Oct. 18-20.

Generative AI, or artificial intelligence, uses computers to perform tasks and improve itself as it learns. AI is not new – primitive chatbots, powered by nongenerative AI that doesn't teach itself – have been around since the 1960s. But generative AI's rocketing sophistication has powered dizzying breakthroughs in everything from science to art to manufacturing and fears it could spell the end of humanity.

Generative AI has the attention of mayors across the world and is the focus of multiple lectures at the annual conference that brings together "mayors, city innovators, business leaders, urban experts, artists and activists to discuss solutions to pressing issues."

Kincannon, who will start her second term in December, attended a three-hour session that empowered mayors and city employees from around the world to use generative AI, and discussed it in Washington with Knox News.

"One of the messages was, 'Don't let the fears freeze us in place, because these tools are out there," Kincannon told Knox News on Oct. 19. "People in the community are using them, people in the private sector are using them."

Kincannon is keenly aware of how generative AI could be abused and emphasized she wants Knoxville to start small. She hopes to assign someone in the city to research how it could best be deployed.

"(I want to use AI) in a very measured and intentional way," she told Knox News. "The information and privacy concerns are legitimate. ... I'm not going to do any of this without making sure we have some firm guardrails."

Those guardrails include fact-checking and reviewing generative AI content, disclosing when generative AI is used and preventing the sharing of private information.

She suggested a possible advance could be using generative AI to translate city information into different languages. The city currently uses nongenerative AI for a chatbot started during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Generative AI is more advanced than nongenerative AI because it strives to create entirely new data that resembles human-related content rather than using already created data that powers scripted functions. In short, it learns as it goes, although there is deep debate about whether it can achieve human-like learning and capabilities.

Topics discussed at the conference were wide-ranging, including innovative ways to fix the housing crisis, strategies for ending homelessness, trends in migration and its impact, how to use data to improve equity in cities and urban violence prevention.

Allie Feinberg reports on politics for Knox News. Email her: allie.feinberg@knoxnews.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter @alliefeinberg. She is reporting this week from the Bloomberg CityLab conference in Washington.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Kincannon cautiously optimistic about AI role in local government