CTG UAlbany Launches AI in Government Lab
ALBANY, N.Y. (Aug. 29, 2024) — The University at Albany’s Center for Technology in Government has launched the AI in Government Lab to highlight a substantial body of work dedicated to the study and application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public sector.
The Center for Technology in Government (CTG UAlbany) has collaborated with government agencies to develop practical AI applications to benefit citizens. Examples include a multi-year partnership with the City of Schenectady supported in part by the SUNY Technology Accelerator Fund to further the development of its Community Asset Tracker and a collaboration with the New York State Board of Elections to explore the utility of New York State elections data to support voter registration visualization and pattern analysis. In addition, CTG UAlbany is also actively studying the adoption, implementation, and impact of AI in public organizations, as illustrated by a $637,470 grant-funded project with the Institute of Museum and Library Services to examine how libraries, as public service organizations, can empower communities to better understand AI and ensure its ethical design and application.
“Conceptualizing AI as part of a larger set of cognitive computing systems—systems that can learn from data and interact with humans to assist employees—can be traced back to the early 1950s,” said CTG UAlbany Director J. Ramon Gil-Garcia. “However, the past two decades have produced significant advances in enabling technologies, such as cloud computing, deep learning and reinforcement learning, which have reached their tipping point toward practical applications. As a result of such advances, a range of AI applications including chatbots, predictive analytics, and automated decision-making systems, are increasingly used by governments around the world.”
The AI in Government Lab provides scholars and practitioners with a vast range of resources, which include academic and applied research projects, publications, presentations and information about CTG UAlbany’s staff participation in committees, boards and taskforces related to the use of AI in the public sector. The Lab constitutes a comprehensive repository of initiatives that help advance the understanding of AI in public organizations.
“Rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence research and development are driving the integration of AI into the decision-making and operational systems of governments at all levels and around the world,” continued Gil-Garcia. “As government leaders and managers ready themselves to transform their agencies through digital strategies and make enterprise technological investment decisions, they must consider that most new systems include some form of AI.”
CTG UAlbany’s project on public libraries and AI has explored how public service organizations are helping citizens to bridge the AI knowledge gap. The project has found that public libraries are: 1) increasing awareness about AI and 2) developing non-technical and technical competencies through various activities. To increase awareness among community members, public libraries host seminars, exhibitions and podcasts that discuss the benefits and challenges of AI. These programs focus on demystifying AI for the general public.
“Public libraries are building competencies of community members through programs such as lectures, courses and makerspaces,” said CTG UAlbany Research Director Mila Gascó-Hernandez. “These programs not only teach participants how to use new AI tools, such as ChatGPT, but also help them develop programming skills for machine learning projects. Technical competencies in AI are further emphasized through makerspace programs.”
The work of the Lab also contributes to UAlbany’s AI Plus initiative, the University’s holistic approach to integrating teaching and learning about AI throughout academic and research programs to ensure every graduate is prepared to live and work in a world radically changed by technology in the coming decades. The effort includes a $75 million investment from New York State to significantly expand AI supercomputing along with new collaborations with IBM and NVIDIA.
In 2024, a new research collaboration between UAlbany and IBM on the Center for Emerging Artificial Intelligence Systems resulted in UAlbany being the first university in the world to host a prototype IBM Artificial Intelligence Unit computing cluster designed specifically for AI inferencing. Simultaneously, UAlbany is building another supercomputing cluster powered by advanced NVIDIA DGX hardware that will provides students, faculty and staff access to some of the fastest and most powerful computers in the world.