State Legislator Calls for Increased State Agency Use of AI

Speaking at the Texas Association of State Systems for Computing and Communications (TASSCC) State of the State Conference last Friday, state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (R-98) shared his perspective on artificial intelligence and how he would like to see state agencies use the technology in the upcoming fiscal year.

A vocal champion of technological innovation in the state, Capriglione re-emphasized his dedication to making Texas a national leader in AI.

“I want Texas to be the leader in this technology, right? If I were king for a day, this is what I would spend a lot of time and effort on in money [for] agencies in the state to be able to develop,” said Capriglione. “The world is going to drastically change because of this uptake or this growth and just the capital expenditure that's going into machine learning, in analytics, all that stuff. And I think Texas is in an incredible position because of our politics, because of our workforce.”

To reach this goal, Capriglione has called for more AI-related legislative appropriations requests (LARs) from state agencies.

“What I would like to see is rolling out a lot more of those to be about artificial intelligence,” said Capriglione. “I think that's the opportunity if you see places where you know why this can be made more efficient, or faster, or better, then let’s do that now. And along the way, let's learn so that when we come back in two years — actually, now only a year from now — we can use what we learn and invest more into this technology.”

Capriglione stressed that his vision for AI is not the replacement of the human element, but human augmentation with AI.

“A lot of what we're going to do next session might revolve exactly around the workforce,” said Capriglione. “Not protecting the workforce, but just augmenting the value that humans in the loop do have. At the same time, making their work not just more efficient, but what we want is for their work to be better.”

Human-AI augmentation was a major recommendation by experts gathered by the Innovation and Technology Caucus of the Texas Legislature (IT Caucus), of which Capriglione is caucus chair, at an “AI Day” in November.

“I think that [the] positions that ... will appear are AI as the assistant,” said University of Texas at Austin professor Sherri Greenberg, chair of the university’s ethical AI research team, Good Systems. “You may actually have a robot that’s helping you, not replacing you. It’s a human in the loop, but AI being of assistance to you.”

As for the next legislative session, Capriglione hopes for not only continued investments in cybersecurity, legacy modernization, privacy and data management, but for AI machine learning and big data projects that have the potential to save money.

Many of Capriglione’s perspectives on AI echo sentiments shared by other experts present at the IT Caucus’ AI Day, where topics such as AI’s role in the workforce, AI’s role in government and how agencies using AI can protect data were deliberated.