What is Rhode Island's AI Executive Order? Chris Parisi breaks this and the AI Task Force down!

In today's episode, we dive deep into Rhode Island's AI Executive Order. Host Chris Parisi shares the 5 key components of the executive order, including:
- data unification
- appointing a chief data officer
- establishing an AI center of excellence
- training and education initiatives
- the creation of an AI task force.

Ride this AI wave with us as we explore the AI executive order!

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➤ ➤ ➤ Check out these episode mentions
The AI Executive Order ➤ https://governor.ri.gov/sites/g/files...

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Transcript

welcome back to the AI wave podcast the only podcast that talks about how Rhode Island can be the leader in this AI-driven economy I'm your host Chris Parisi and today we're going to talk about the AI executive order. That's right ladies and gentlemen the governor has signed it and I'm going to go into what does it entail what are the key components and I"s that task force that you keep talking about Chris is that finally in it or what?”  so stay tuned get ready and we'll ride this AI wave 

all right ladies and gentlemen it's finally here the AI task force has been signed so for all of you that been following this podcast since we started about almost a little less than a year ago number one thank you for following along and number two you've known that I've been really advocating for the AI task force this is something I've been working with Governor McKee advocating a pushing for so that Rhode Island can be that number one when it comes to being the leading state in the AI driven economy and most recently I would say about 3 weeks ago or so the governor finally signed it we're finally doing here. Cue the Applause! We're really excited and people have been asking “so I hear about this executive order uh what the hell does it mean? what's included?”  

right I've been talking mostly about the task force but I don't know if you know it but the executive order actually has five key components in it so what I'm going to do in this episode I'm going to dive into what are those five key components of the AI executive order that the Rhode Island Governor signed and then I'm going to dive deeper into one of them you guessed it the task force and I'm going to explain what does it look like, can we get a sneak peek into who's going to be on it maybe maybe not and what's the whole purpose of this task force so get ready and uh ride this AI wave as we dive into the AI executive order and what it means.  

So there's five components on of this AI executive order that I alluded to what are they and what do they mean so I'm going to Rattle them off quick: 

Number one:  it's all about data so the government and data unification  

Number two: it's about appointing a chief data officer  

Number three: we want to establish an AI Center of Excellence  

Number four is training and education initiatives which is very important  

Number the creation of an AI task force we'll talk about that last so stay tuned 

First, what I'm going to do is explain what does it mean for data unification is that just a fancy way to say we're going to do some things with data yes and no it's actually really important so right now the government has a ton of data All about us, from individuals businesses as a small business owner in Rhode Island if you are one of a small business owner you know you have to go to many different different agencies and like “why do I have to fill out a form for the Secretary State when the Department of Health already has that information as well as the division of taxation” I mean it just makes no sense but also from a state perspective that let's say a Commerce Rhode Island Commerce they may not have any information about our business even though we applied with the Secretary of State I mean it's so much. Unifying data for informed decisions and insights.  

It's all in silos and what we want to do or what the state wants to do is unify that data make educ decisions based on that data have a better sense of who we are as a state more than just Census Data how are small businesses doing what's our income levels like for our Rhode Island citizens and what are some key things that we have to do so we can act quickly based on the data. I mean, just like business owners we need to make sure that we have the data in order to make informed decisions well it's the same for the government we need to ensure from a government standpoint that we have access to all this data that it's unified in one big system and that we're able to be intelligent with insights so it's not just data but we have insights to make informed decisions on how the state can make it a better place for our citizens and for our businesses that operate here.  In addition to that there's also agency participation so it's a way to say “hey we're going to do this executive order but we need people to be involved here” 

so um it aims to improve transparency enhance public access to that data ensure it's available while adhering to privacy and security regulations uh overall ethics is important in everything all five components right it's not its own component because it's applied to everything so when it comes to ethics it also comes to privacy that's a very important part that we need to ensure is involved in all five components especially number one the data unification for our state  

so what's number two? 

if you remember good for you, if you don't, I'll remind you.  

It's the appointment of a chief data officer so that's going to be uh appointed and they're going to maintain the AI Center of Excellence.  They're going to oversee data operations quality management and really ensure that we uh establish um data sharing standards and preparing the state for that AI adoption they're going to be the point person this is going to be a very key role uh we're going to want to make sure that the individual that's appointed to this role is ensuring what's in the best interest of all of us so that's transparency and also thankful that we have this role because if we don't have someone appointed to this a lot of this is going to fall as a to-do item to many agency directors and their to-do items are already pretty full so the fact that the state's investing in this position is really smart and really critical to make make sure all of these components are going to be fulfilled. That's number two the appointment of a chief data officer.

Number three is the establishment of this AI Center of Excellence sounds cool because it is pretty cool so this is aimed at developing responsible AI policies.  We want to minimize biases when it comes to AI um the code of ethics that I talked about that's where this Center is going to come they're going to be Consulting with AI EXP experts whether it's in the marketing field or in the tech field the startup field the data science field we're going to consult with folks uh in the center of excellence and it's going to help guide the state employees right within this uh Center of Excellence all Plan for data unification and workforce reskilling. right we talked about data unification and making sure we're using it but how are we going to do that and  who's going to help manage that it can't just be one person so it has to be the center of excellence  

so number four is related to that now we need to train and educate not just the folks in the government but you you know the Rhode Islander that is like “How is this going to impact me?” right we talked about how IBM 60% of jobs are going to need to be reskilled within 3 years that's a lot right what does that mean for DLT. Department of Labor and Training are we preparing our Workforce and making sure that they have the skills that are going to be needed in the very near future also back to the state government workers how are we going to be this state of Excellence when it comes to AI we need to back up our words so we need to educate and retrain a lot of our government workers to make sure that they're on top of all of this so that everything that we are deploying is able to be utilized managed and fulfilled properly that's mostly going to be the state workers Municipal employ but also in the private SE sector we're going to leverage existing programs um really focus on upscaling the workforce uh which is a good segue into 

Number five is the formation of the AI Task Force if you did a lot of keyword Research into this podcast you would think that AI task force is probably one of the most popular phrases we needed it and we finally have it so I can't tell you too much right now about who's on 

this task force yours truly I hope so just kidding I will be on it um but I can tell you who's leading it and this individual is the perfect person to run this AI task force someone that has a great amount of experience on a national level when it comes to cyber security and emerging Technologies someone that's been a public servant for many many decades to Rhode Island so he knows what it's like to give up oneself for greatness of our state and that's Congressman Jim Langevin had the pleasure to be working with him more recently and he is one intelligent calculated thoughtful individual that also has a tenacity a quiet tenacity within him that's going to ensure that if his name's behind it you better be sure that it's going to be successful and uh he will cheer this AI task force and who becomes the members of this AI task force is being discussed right now and soon we'll have that announcement of who's going to be on this AI task force but I'll at least tell you what I Envision for what this comes out to be so here's what I'm envisioning for this AI task force for Rhode Island number one we talked about Workforce training we need to ensure our Workforce is skilled upskilled and trained for the new technologies and jobs that are going to be created in this AI economy we need to ensure that we mitigate the job loss right everyone is very scared that AI is going to take their job and I'm not here to say that that it's false AI will take a lot of jobs but guess what AI will also increase and generate a lot of new jobs too and people say I don't get that how is that going to happen and I would say listen go back to the Industrial Revolution and Rhode Island which happened to be the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution farmers and folks were worried that a lot of jobs were going to be taken away that there's going to be this automation this assembly line and we're going to lose a lot of jobs well guess what? 

GDP and everything went up new industries were formed and created more jobs were created more than ever before then they said the same thing not too long ago when this internet thing came about oh no we're going to lose a lot of jobs automation data we're going to lose a lot of jobs well we've been increasing jobs through every technological advancement why is this going to be any different there's going to be new industries that we've never thought of before that are going to have new jobs now I do think it's something that we have to seriously consider that what if the net gain isn't there what are we going to do but in the meantime here's what we have to do how are we going to mitigate the job loss here in Rhode Island and Beyond and how are we going to upskill our workers so that we can transfer those new skills into the new jobs in the AI economy that's one key pillar in the AI task force and 

number two we have the workers let's focus on the businesses and how can AI adoption in business and education reform. businesses adopt AI how can they transform their businesses to adapt to the time so that we can still be involved in this AI Revolution we need to provide our small businesses and midsize businesses the resources we need to invest in an ecosystem for startups where we're ensuring that the money's coming in but also that we're providing labs and we're providing the data centers and we're providing the accelerators and the tools and the network so that folks want to come here right we have a great  

Empower our Educators to give them the tools so that they can do that in a scalable way CU having dozens of kids you know trying to teach them in 55 minutes let's say a course or a whole day if if they're younger that's a lot to ask for our Educators give them the tools they'll do their jobs even better when they're able to educate on that onetoone basis make it more efficient for them and have them reduce the hours and things like correcting papers and more time thinking strategically and creatively of how can make this a fun experience that our students will enjoy so that they can learn let's revamp our K through 12 and then let's look at higher ed the AI executive order was signed at Rhode Island colleges cyber security and emerging Technologies Institute that's going to be the base for all of this for the AI center of excellence and we need more colleges and universities like Rick where they're investing in AI they have a new program I know pretty much every University here in Rhode Islands doing it I mean hats off to our highed community every University shout out to all of them they're really doing a great job on changing what their courses are and ensuring they have the right programs and we all have to find a niche right so how does Ai and the blue economy maybe we could think about that for URI and you know when it comes to artist and Ry we have to all be considerate of that um and really invest in our higher ed to ensure that we're then creating the the breeding ground so to speak for startups you think of Pittsburgh right and you may not think robotics when you think of Pittsburgh but they're the robotics capital in America Pittsburgh right and a lot of it had to do and has to do with their universities the colleges that are right there so why can't Providence kind of duplicate that model our beautiful city and quality of life that we have with our great High EDS that we have Brown University. RISDI, URI, and Bryant University go Bulldogs  - everyone that we have here let's make sure that they're equipped part of all of this so that we can have a whole system of students that go from our great revamped K through 12 to higher ed and they want to stay here in Rhode Island to build it up so those are the key components right: 

• education of our businesses and startups as well 
• Workforce Development in the AI task force  

I'm just one person I mean I want to hear what you think the AI task force should focus on, like what is a pillar that we should incorporate the AI task force that's just three um there could be more so you tell me you know DM uh shoot a message put a comment below like what do you want the AI task force to focus on seriously like your words have an impact I'm going to listen to them and I'm going to advocate for you when I'm in these meetings to ensure that this is a collective movement this isn't just one person this isn't just one state this isn't just a worker uh on a government telling us what to do this is only going to work if we are all involved with it we want to be the best why not right why can't Rhode Island be the leading state in the AI-driven economy by 2030 why not We have the potential I hate saying the word potential but we certainly do you AI executive order to drive economic development. need that in order to get there but now's the time to rip off that potential word and go into we are the leaders in the AI-driven economy this executive order was the first step into getting there making a reality and putting a budget towards it right in this Chief data science officer in this AI Center of Excellence ensuring our data has unification at the government level ensuring we're training our government workers and our businesses and developing this AI task force so I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on what you think about this AI executive order now that you hopefully have a better understanding what you think the pillars of the AI task force should be and I'm curious who do you think should be on this AI task force do you want to be on it I think uh it's not up to me but I would love to hear what you think on all of this so that we can collectively uh work together so  

Thank you so much for listening to our episode today you can find more information on our show notes I'll include a link to the AI executive order um always can reach out to me with any questions ideas and thoughts I'm Chris Parisi your host on the AI wave podcast thank you for 

joining us and we'll ride the wave next time see you later