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What's your AI success story? What made you realize you had to change? And what does a hopeful future with AI look like to you? AI Hope with Geoff Livingston asks three simple questions of people doing the hard work of adapting and thriving in the AI era.
Amy Kluber
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[00:00:00] Hey, everybody, this is Jeff Livingston. Welcome to another edition of AI Hope. We've got a very special guest with us, and that is Amy Kluber. And you are, you're the editor in chief, is that right? I am. Of Government CIO, very talented individual, a podcaster, an event manager extraordinaire, and most importantly, ~uh,~ she's covering and her team is covering the public sector on the federal level right now, which is, ~uh,~ at least over the past month, has been pretty crazy from a, ~uh,~ an AI perspective with all the news that's happened, and, ~uh,~ even yesterday at the UN.
~Uh, we're, ~we're recording this on September 22nd, by the way, in case something new happens, 'cause it does seem to happen pretty quickly right now. ~Um, ~Amy, how are you? I'm doing great. ~Uh, ~and yeah, and this space is moving so fast. It's funny that you mentioned ~the, the, ~the UN speech yesterday because ~I, ~I guess now we're gonna have a hot take about it, right?
Yeah, I- I... ~We can, ~we can do that. Let's, let... ~I mean, ~I think it would be ~kind of ~tone deaf to not give you the [00:01:00] opportunity to sound off on everything that's happened. Just to recap for folks, what started as cybersecurity, ~uh,~ incidents with, ~uh,~ Anthropic, ~uh,~ commenting on some of the things that were happening with OpenAI and Hugging Face, and then some Anthropic staff saying that we're looking at a technology that has a 10% chance for, of killing everybody, ~um,~ to government regulation, to now the president commenting on things.
That's six weeks in a nutshell. Only six? I think, I feel like it's six weeks. It might be more.
Yeah, so ~what, ~what's your take? ~Um, you know, ~so I guess the, the elephant in the room is the term super intelligence, ~I guess. ~That's what is going around now. ~You know, ~I haven't really heard that- Superior ... yet. Superior, ~right. Um- ~How do you feel now about bringing superior intelligence to, ~uh,~ do your work for you?
Y- ~you know, um, ~I haven't seen it be able to operate for me at that level just yet, so I'll reserve my judgment. Yeah, I would say ~that ~that is, ~uh,~ that is a gentle way of [00:02:00] putting it. And ~I, ~I realize too because of the way, ~uh,~ your business works and you're needing to cover the federal sector, that obviously shapes how, ~um,~ tonal you can be about your response.
Is that fair? Yeah, very fair. And especially being, ~you know, ~in the news space, ~um,~ there's a lot of like unknowns that are happening right now in regard to what it means to work in a newsroom in the AI age. So I think that's what's most interesting for me right now is just being able to see, okay, ~well ~what does having AI in your newsroom look like, and what are some of the considerations that you have to think about ~and, ~and ~the, ~the, ~you know, ~the ethics around it, and just being able to trust what its output is and ensure that the audience also trusts you using it, ~you know?~
So there's a lot of like new areas that I'm certainly thinking about all the time and, ~uh,~ even from a, ~you know, ~management standpoint or developing new [00:03:00] policies, like we haven't had to do this before, so it's been interesting. Yeah. ~It, ~it's definitely, ~uh,~ unique in the, some of the ~Um, ~trust issues it brings to the table.
~Um, ~so ~I mean, ~I guess it gets into the whole responsible ethical, ~uh,~ aspect of everything. But before we get into that, I did wanna ask you, what made you feel like you need to use this technology? What was your moment, ~you know, ~your kind of epiphany that caused you to say, "We need to be embracing this technology"?
I don't think I had a necessarily like a, a single moment or a like, wow, I-- It wasn't really a light bulb moment for me, but I think it was just ~kind of ~gradually as, especially in the space that we're covering, ~uh,~ in government, as they started talking more about it and prioritizing it more and, ~uh,~ wanting to understand what it means.
There, there was a lot of us like on the same boat, if you will, of just trying to learn, ~um,~ what it could [00:04:00] do or how to even use it in our workflows, et cetera. So it ~kind of ~just got to a point where I was like, "Okay, ~well,~ let me just start experimenting it with it," and, ~you know, I can't, ~I can't judge it unless I use it myself.
~So, um, ~I was just interested in how it could be applied and used in order to help me, ~you know, ~do something faster or more efficient. ~Um, ~so yeah, it was gradual. It was gradual. Yeah, that makes sense. ~I mean, I, ~I feel like a lot of people wanna have this epiphany moment, but more often than not, it's like this slow creep into your software, ~you know?~
Yep. ~Um, well, ~when you mentioned some of the concerns and, ~uh,~ some of the things that ~you're, ~you're addressing with responsible AI or explainable AI, can you kinda give us a little bit of a take on that? ~Like where, ~where you guys are trying to focus on, ~um,~ from a, a journalist organization standpoint? I, I guess in the early phases it was more of, ~um,~ that writing perspective, which came a little bit more natural to us just because that's what we're doing every day is writing, whether that's for emails or, ~um, um, you know, ~trying to [00:05:00] research or brainstorm.
For me personally, I fi- find it very helpful to cure writer's block. Yes. ~Uh, ~it's not that I'm, like, using its output, ~like, word for ~word for something, but it really helps me, "Oh, I didn't think about framing it in that way. Let me, ~like,~ adapt that into, ~you know, ~how I'm wording this particular area," or what have you.
So it has-- it definitely has its writing benefits, ~um,~ just to help you do it faster. But, ~uh,~ I actually built a Copilot agent, ~um,~ for our team because we were going through, ~uh,~ some really challenging times parsing through a lot of our Excel spreadsheets, ~um,~ for a key part of our events, which includes, ~uh,~ our Flywheel Awards program.
Okay. And we had data and information in so many disparate areas. We crowdsourced these nominations, ~uh,~ for our Flywheel Awards from the community, so they were [00:06:00] coming in through our, ~um, you know, our, ~our forms that we use for those. We had separate documents where we were brainstorming ideas or, ~like,~ trying to transfer, ~uh,~ information from that form to, ~um, you know, ~a Word doc or spreadsheets trying to track, because this has been, ~you know, ~over four years in the making and, ~um,~ I thought, "Hey, that's a good use case for trying to build ~a, ~a Copilot agent so that I don't have to actually manually search through these things, ~uh,~ in order to find names or see who's been nominated in the past, or just, ~you know, ~house these and store them for future iterations of our Flywheel Awards."
~Um, ~so yeah. ~Right. ~So that is now a living, breathing database that we can talk to, and it has really helped us just be able to not have to find another document manually and, ~um,~ trying to do all that wasting time trying to dig [00:07:00] all through our, like, SharePoint ~and, ~and, ~um,~ all the places where these things are living.
So- That ~I, ~I would say, ~you know, ~if that's a, a good, ~uh,~ signal for AI's benefits, ~you know, ~I'm gonna try to explore more agents I can build. Yeah. ~I mean, ~isn't it amazing how it can automate pain in the butt tasks like that and make it easier, but then when you get it to write War and Peace, it's a nightmare?
And ~I, ~I feel like we underestimate the value of creativity and generating original content, if you would. Absolutely. ~Uh, ~a- and completely underestimate how valuable it is to get rid of, ~like,~ these, like, ankle biters. ~Right. ~And ~it, it's, ~it's like I wasn't thinking about it as, "Oh, let me see what AI can do for me."
It was more like, "What process is annoying and repetitive and just unnecessarily complicated that we can rethink and apply that automation lens to?" Which is what we did. [00:08:00] Very cool. ~Um, ~how do you see that working, ~uh,~ in the federal sector right now? Do you feel ~like ~a- as a whole, the, ~um,~ agency world, the government agency world is doing a better job of adapting for things like that, or are they still doing, ~uh, kind of ~like pipe dream AI work?
Oh, absolutely. I think especially now more than ever with the calls for, ~like,~ efficiency and just being smarter with taxpayer dollars, ~um,~ we are seeing agencies increasingly talk about that. ~Like, ~"Hey, ~how can, ~how can we apply AI to this rote task that previously took us months to do, ~um,~ and get it down to days or minutes?"
~Uh, ~I hear that all the time, and I think that's only gonna increase. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. ~Right. ~All right, so here's the ti- the title question: What is your AI hoping? My AI hope is- Yeah. Where do you th- where... If this works out well, as opposed to the anthropic vision for the future- ~Um, ~[00:09:00] where do you see AI taking us?
Or maybe just government CIO or Amy Kluber. I think if- AI can really help us, ~like,~ reduce the distance between people and the things that they're capable of doing. ~Um, ~I think before we saw a lot of ~like, ~okay, we need to bake in a lot of time to do something because, ~you know, ~as humans, n- naturally we have our limitations.
Sure. ~Um, ~but I feel like AI helps us just get to that from point A to point B faster. And I don't think that means removing, ~you know, ~human judgment from it, but it's a matter of just helping us do what we do best faster ~and, ~and better. Yeah, that makes sense. And then let's talk about the federal level.
Where would you like to see AI go and help the, ~uh,~ American citizen, if you would? I think it's ~the, ~the same thing. ~If it, ~if it could reduce the amount of time someone has to sit, ~like,~ on a [00:10:00] call to access some sort of service or benefit, ~um,~ or being able to, ~uh,~ get some, ~like,~ rote things out of the way in order to be able to talk to a human, ~um,~ it- w- wherever it can, ~like,~ impact the public, just being able to get the, the services more quickly and inter- in- interface with the government, ~you know, ~more efficiently from a human-to-human level, ~um,~ I think that's where a lot of people ~are, ~are hoping that it would, it transform operations and everything.
Yeah, makes a ton of sense to me. I love it. And that, my friend, is AI Hope. We are a short podcast. I appreciate you being on here. Where can people find you? ~Uh, ~I am always on LinkedIn, ~uh,~ so shoot me a note there or a connection, and I will respond, hopefully respond to you quickly. ~Um, ~that's something I have not, ~uh,~ sent AI to do just yet.
There you go. But, ~uh,~ yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place. Sounds good. All right, so we'll put that link in the show notes as well as a link to Government CIO, [00:11:00] and thank you for appearing on the podcast. For sure. Thank you.