The City of Albuquerque is one step closer to having an artificial intelligence policy after city councilors approved a proposal to convene a group of experts from city departments to develop an AI policy.
The proposal — sponsored by Councilors Tammy Fiebelkorn and Dan Champine — passed by a 7-2 vote.
[YES: Joaquín Baca, Dan Champine, Tammy Fiebelkorn, Dan Lewis, Klarissa Peña, Nichole Rogers, Louie Sanchez
NO: Brook Bassan, Renée Grout]
“I’m not an artificial intelligence expert, but I do know that there are some really good uses of AI that can come about,” Fiebelkorn said. “I’m not saying that AI is bad, I’m saying that there are really bad uses of AI that we want to make sure we protect our citizens against. We also want to think through those good uses and see where they are useful to the city.”
The AI policy working group would include staff from multiple city departments and stakeholders from community entities. The legislation also appropriates funding to “support the development and implementation of the policy and identification of best practices with all AI uses.”
During the council’s Oct. 7 meeting, Councilor Brook Bassan was the only member who voted against raising the funding for the bill from $40,000 to $50,000. On Monday, before voting against the entire proposal, Bassan again raised her funding objections.
“I really have a hard time with too many cooks in the kitchen category on this,” Bassan said Monday. “I just really have a hard time wanting to even pay $50,000 to come up with something that 31 people are eventually going to agree on because you can’t get nine of us to agree on something very often. I’m not able to support this.”
Fiebelkorn said she thinks it is important that city employees and community members have a say in developing an AI policy that will be in place for a “very long time.”
“We’re at a precipice of a really big change in technology, and it behooves us to make sure that we have a plan in place to really put guardrails up for the proper use of AI,” Fiebelkorn said. “While $50,000 is a lot of money…it’s not a lot of money when you think about the potential downfalls of unfettered AI use.”
Read more about the proposal here.
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