Pennsylvania to Use ChatGPT for Official Government Work – PCMag UK
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If you work for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, you’re getting a new coworker: ChatGPT.
Gov. Josh Shapiro today said the Commonwealth’s Office of Administration (OA) will head up a pilot program of ChatGPT Enterprise. Employees in the department will use it for things like creating and editing copy, drafting job descriptions, finding duplicative or conflicting guidance in employee policy, making outdated policy language more accessible, and generating code.
The effort is Pennsylvania’s first time using generative AI tools for state government employees, and the OA pilot will “help guide the wider integration of this technology into state government operations,” Gov. Shapiro’s office says. It’s also OpenAI’s first agreement with a state entity.
Employees will receive individual support and guidance. If things go well, another 100 licenses will eventually open up to non-OA agency employees.
For now, “no Pennsylvanian will interact directly with ChatGPT in any way when they interact with the Commonwealth.” Since this is the enterprise version of ChatGPT, nothing OA employees enter into ChatGPT will be used to train it or other OpenAI products.
This comes after Gov. Shapiro last fall signed an executive order designed to let state agencies experiment with AI solutions.
“I believe Pennsylvania can be a national leader in the safe and responsible use of generative AI in our government operations – and this first-in-the-nation pilot with OpenAI will help us safely and securely learn from and use this important technology to serve Pennsylvanians and empower our workforce,” says Gov. Shapiro.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman echoed the sentiment, calling Pennsylvania’s program a “commitment to innovation.”
The test period will likely be used to make sure ChatGPT doesn’t hallucinate, leading to state-sanctioned misinformation. AI chatbots have landed a few lawyers in hot water after they cited fake cases served up by AI in official filings. Loading up state databases with chatbot-generated garbage could be similarly disastrous.
Hello, my name is Joe and I am a tech blogger. My first real experience with tech came at the tender age of 6 when I started playing Final Fantasy IV (II on the SNES) on the family’s living room console. As a teenager, I cobbled together my first PC build using old parts from several ancient PCs, and really started getting into things in my 20s. I served in the US Army as a broadcast journalist. Afterward, I served as a news writer for XDA-Developers before I spent 11 years as an Editor, and eventually Senior Editor, of Android Authority. I specialize in gaming, mobile tech, and PC hardware, …
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