“AI Talks” is a series from the Huntsville Business Journal on Artificial Intelligence and its applicability to the world of business. Each month, HBJ plans on bringing you interesting topics led by our contributing expert writer, Carl Holden.

This has also introduced another “writer” to our journal: Artificial Intelligence itself. Using Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT), we plan on bringing our readers an “article” written directly by AI.

While AI cannot currently write a news article with fully original sources, this series hopefully will introduce our readers to the nuances of Artificial Intelligence in the modern age of business. The first article in this series is written from our contributing expert writer, Carl Holden. One the next page, you can find an article using ChatGPT.

Realizing Huntsville’s Goal to Be an “AI City”

For those of you who did not read my article last month, I’m a participant in the Mayor’s AI Task Force, a group of dozens of people across all professions that meet monthly to discuss our future in artificial intelligence.

After our recent AI Task Force meeting, we were all sent an email for further thought. “What does an AI City look like? What are the characteristics that will give us that distinction?” Rather than just respond to that email, I think I might as well knock out two tasks by giving my response via this article.

In the literal sense, an AI City would be one in which a part, if not the whole, of it is managed or governed by AI. I don’t think anyone wants that nor is AI capable of it. If by AI City you mean a place that directly benefits from AI development financially, that’s not ever going to be us. That’s Silicon Valley, and that’s not a cultural, capital, or workforce fit for Huntsville.

I think the question is really about, “How do we get people to perceive Huntsville as a place that embraces AI, just like we have embraced space and government contracting?” Spoiler alert! I’ve partly already answered the question.

Before I get to that, I think it’s important that you know that the Task Force has split up into committees that are now having their own individual meetings. The committees are Education, Workforce Development, STEM and Recruitment, Capital & Entrepreneurship, Community Engagement & Collaboration, and Legal & Ethics. Now divided into committees, we need more help! Contact me on LinkedIn if you believe you can contribute to one of these committees and I’ll forward your information to the appropriate people.

As you can see, THIS is our first step to being an AI City, but change needs to actually be reflected in our work in these committees. So where can that happen?

I referred to it when I said “embraced space and government contracting” a few paragraphs before. The money and talent to incorporate AI is in those organizations and several companies and organizations are beginning to work on projects. However, it is not near enough. I’ve met many sizable organizations in the contracting space that didn’t even know there was an Executive Order on AI.

For those of you familiar with SAM.gov, there are already 56 contracts open for bid that expressly say “artificial intelligence.” ChatGPT 3.5 is not even two years old yet! What happens to Huntsville if next year there are 100 to 200 contracts that express need for AI skills? Is our workforce ready?

A speaker from a major consulting firm illuminated this in our recent Task Force meeting. AI literacy, education and upskilling are paramount to our success in the near future. We have to catch people up. This is not the internet. We can’t “work our way into it” or “use it when it’s better.”

If we had treated the moon with that kind of attitude, there’d be a Russian flag on it.

Man landed on the moon 55 years ago. There’s only so long we can brag about that!

So how does Huntsville become an AI City? We choose it to be. You do your part in learning how to use it. You encourage your work colleagues to experiment or your boss to give time for it. If you have time and resources, you contribute to our committees. We build policies, programs, and workforce that can optimize AI opportunities in areas we already excel in: space, engineering, cybersecurity, and biotechnology.

What’s the alternative? We sit on our hands, and we let Alabama fall behind the curve. We hope we can catch up one day like we have had to struggle against other issues. That’s not what the mayor or our state leadership wants. However, they can’t really push the needle; we do. Funny enough, true human intelligence is required to recognize when opportunities are ready to be taken, not artificial intelligence.