SALT LAKE CITY — Utah state leaders from the newly formed "Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy" weighed in on their concerns about the future of AI in the Beehive State.
Margaret Woolley Busse, the Executive Director for the Utah Department of Commerce, and Zachary Boyd, the Director of Artificial Intelligence Policy, are tasked with taking on one of the most revolutionary developments in human history.
“This is really exciting for Utah and frankly, the world over,” Busse said. “The Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy is designed to proactively keep our eyes on this new technology.”
Learning from the challenges of regulating social media, Busse explained Utah needs guardrails for artificial intelligence without hurting businesses and still protecting the public.
“It's very normal for governments and for regulation, to just get out of date...particularly with the pace of these technologies, advancing so incredibly quickly,” Busse said.
As the office determines what areas to focus on first, they’ve heard concerns about privacy, job loss and AI used for decision-making.
The Utah Department of Commerce has asked Zachary Boyd to set up guardrails for AI, and he has the background to stay ahead of it. Boyd has training in machine learning from BYU, UCLA and Chapel Hill.
“They have a trillion parameters in them, or they have billions and billions of numbers that describe their behavior,” Boyd remarked. “So of course, no one can fit in their head all at once what each of those billion billion numbers does at the same time. So there's an air of mystique to them."
As director of The Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy, Boyd is recruiting others for a “think tank” to better understand how AI is generated
The office is also running an AI learning laboratory to help companies feel confident using the technology.
“We’ll be able to observe their data will be able to provide this regulatory mitigation so they can try some solutions out in a sandbox environment where we keep it small,” Boyd said. “So not too much can go wrong.”
In the future, the office will create recommendations for the legislature as the rest of the country watches Utah.
“To our knowledge, no other state has set up an office like this,” Boyd reflected. “Hopefully if we set things up, right, this can be a huge benefit for, you know, the rest of this generation, but especially for the next generation.”
Right now the office is in the exploratory phase as they prepare for a bigger launch this summer, but they’re open and operating.
