Artificial Intelligence Takes Center Stage at Inaugural DenAI Summit in Denver

As the largest city in a state that last May passed the nation’s first law regulating the potential impact of artificial intelligence on consumers, Denver has taken other steps.

It was all to welcome AI startups, vendors and tech companies to Thursday’s inaugural DenAI Summit, which featured talks with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and former Google CEO Erik Schmidt.

“This is in the blood of Denver and Colorado. We are a place that believes in innovation, believes in entrepreneurship, believes in the spirit of the Old West,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston told a large crowd in a ballroom Thursday at the Colorado Convention Center. “We want to show what is possible and how we can both realize those possibilities and do it responsibly.”

Responsible AI and the impact of newer, generative AI on society were topics discussed throughout the day, but unlike the emphasis on consumer harm that lawmakers and consumer advocates warned about when Senate Bill 205 was passed in May, DenAI focused on the possibilities and potential of the technology to help cities and businesses perform mundane tasks.

“We would like to make our permitting system faster in Denver. Do we have a partner that can help us do that? We would like to make traffic flow more smoothly in Denver. Is there a way to program the traffic signals that is more efficient than what we have now?” Johnston said. “These are all very specific, very practical problems that the city faces every day that we think information and AI can help to make easier.”

A CivCheck presenter in Boston is using an AI assistant to help applicants avoid delays in city permits. Many delays are due to incomplete or non-compliant forms, which require city workers to constantly contact the applicant. That leads to backlogs and delays that can last weeks or months, said Dheekshita Kumar, co-founder of CivCheck.

“Imagine a world where… you’re virtually guaranteed to get a permit the first time you apply,” Kumar said. “In that world, we could actually get permits in days, and cities could build the infrastructure they need at the pace they need it.”

And it’s not just an idea or a dream, she added. CivCheck has worked with the city of Honolulu and reduced the time it takes to conduct city inspections by 70%.

“That means that home inspections that used to take 60 to 90 minutes now take less than 15 to 20 minutes,” she said. “We’ve basically quadrupled the city’s capacity.”

Concerns about how big tech companies treat consumer data—and how AI systems that decide who gets housing, jobs, or insurance might hide discrimination—have spurred legislation across the country, including a new law in Colorado that’s facing review. While DenAI hasn’t dwelled on these issues, they haven’t been completely ignored.

“It’s important to remember that there’s so much excitement in this room about AI, but the vast majority of Americans are still learning about AI and potentially have some doubts about how AI can really help them,” said Liz Giorgi, co-founder of Denver e-commerce studio Soona and moderator of the AI ​​to Empower People talk. “One of the places where I think there’s a big chance our citizens don’t know that real AI is driving their outcomes is in their housing, social services and other basic needs.”

In such cases, said Amina Al Sherif, Google’s head of AI in the public sector, “the goal is to make sure we’re making appropriate disclaimers and educating (and) enabling end users and citizens to understand AI.”

Hoffman said the future shouldn’t be decided solely by “technologists.” But sometimes it’s technology companies that push the world forward.

“Too often the conversation is about the past. And the question is what should the future look like,” said Hoffman, who sold LinkedIn to Microsoft in 2016. “If England hadn’t adopted the loom and said, ‘No, there’ll only be handloom weavers,’ I’m not sure we would have gotten to the middle class in the end. We have better tools in the modern era to help create the equivalent of handloom weavers, but we have to get to that future.”

Schmidt, a former Google chairman and CEO, said that while he worries about the misuse of AI in areas such as automatic weapons, he has a simple solution.

“Unplug it,” he said. “It draws electricity. There’s a switch.”

His recommendation for the city was more optimistic.

“I would like to embrace entrepreneurship,” he said. “You forget that the most valuable companies in America today were started by entrepreneurs 20, 30 years ago who were impossibly young. So why don’t you just organize Denver so you can have all these people here in Denver, it’s a great place.”

Story Type: News

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