California advances GenAI projects to streamline state work on housing, budget, and jobs
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Dec 13, 2024

California advances GenAI projects to streamline state work on housing, budget, and jobs

Invites AI innovators to submit formal proposals to test solutions

What you need to know: California is advancing its first-in-the-nation work to use GenAI solutions to help state agencies streamline housing, budget, and employment work. Three state projects seeking GenAI solutions are moving forward after the state received concepts from AI innovators.

SACRAMENTO –  Building upon Governor Newsom's GenAI Executive Order to safely and responsibly integrate GenAI into state operations, California announced new progress in efforts to explore using GenAI to address critical issues that are top of mind for Californians: housing, budget, and jobs. The state is also launching a new website, GenAI.ca.gov, focused on the work happening in California.

"California must continue to innovate when transformative technology like GenAI can be used right now to help address challenges we face across state government. We must continue to be responsible, proactive, and bold in our work – and that means exploring technology that can help move us forward to make Californians' lives even better."

Governor Gavin Newsom

Today's announcement follows September's first large-scale GenAI Innovator Showcase event, where more than 30 tech innovators including Esri, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and My Town AI presented how they can leverage GenAI to help solve critical challenges.  Using the research gathered, the state has chosen to move into the next phase, a formal procurement process where innovators will bring refined solutions to the table and compete to partner with the state.

"Our hard work is paying off after months of thorough research and engaging with the innovator community to determine whether GenAI is the answer to some of the challenges the state is currently facing," said Government Operations Secretary Amy Tong. "Governor Newsom has made clear his priority to leverage technology and innovation to deliver a government that works for every Californian, while also keeping the state a global leader in cutting-edge tech."

GenAI solutions for housing

Within the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is seeking to track the creation and implementation of housing plans, programs, and initiatives across the state more efficiently and quickly. Using GenAI may increase transparency and accuracy, enabling HCD to provide more equitable housing services across California.

"We need to utilize all the tools at our disposal to improve the lives of all Californians," said Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency Secretary Tomiquia Moss. "By using GenAI to better track and evaluate how local jurisdictions are planning and building housing across California, we can address barriers to housing development and promote affordable housing investments in neighborhoods of opportunity."

Learn more about this work here.

GenAI solutions for workforce planning

The EDD is also working with the State Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) to find innovative GenAI solutions to strengthen state and local workforce planning and policy development. The solution would refine statistical models to enhance recession forecasting and align economic predictions with emerging employment trends. The solution would help provide real-time data to address workforce challenges during recessions. Utilizing GenAI solutions may produce more accurate recession forecasts to better inform state and local workforce planning and policy development.

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"I applaud Governor Newsom's foresight in pursuing the responsible use of AI to enhance our ability to serve Californians," said Labor and Workforce Development Agency Secretary Stewart Knox. "AI is a potentially powerful tool for honing our ability to predict when our fellow residents will need economic assistance and what kinds of workforce training will best prepare them for the jobs of the future."

GenAI solutions for finance

The DOF is seeking an innovative solution to synthesize legislative bill analysis, which is a complex and lengthy process throughout the year. DOF staff currently work across multiple systems to complete this analysis, which is vital to the state budget.  This work includes considering fiscal impacts to the state, stakeholder feedback, previous years' analyses and other intricate information.  The goal of the GenAI solution is to find ways to bring all data sets together and provide staff with comprehensive summaries they can consider early in their process.

"We look forward to potentially leveraging AI technology to streamline our workload, improve decision-making, and ensure responsible allocation of California's financial resources," said Director of Finance Joe Stephenshaw.

Learn more about this work here.

What's Next

The innovator community has up to six weeks to respond to the call for innovative concepts. The state will then continue with the procurement process of evaluating and potentially awarding vendor contracts to test solutions in a secure sandbox environment. As part of the state's innovative procurement process (RFI2), the state will pay innovators only $1 to test their solutions, providing the state and the innovators the unique opportunity to test and learn together from the technology.

California's AI global leadership

AI is already changing the world, and California will play a pivotal role in defining that future. The state is home to 32 of the world's 50 leading GenAI companies, high-impact research and education institutions, and a quarter of the technology's patents and conference papers.

California is launching efforts to help the state take advantage of this emerging technology, while also creating responsible policy guardrails to protect Californians and businesses. California has led the nation in harnessing these transformative technologies while studying the risks they present. The state has undertaken efforts to utilize GenAI to solve challenges, everything from reducing traffic to helping address homelessness.

Last year, Governor Newsom signed an executive order laying out how California's measured approach will focus on shaping the future of ethical, transparent, and trustworthy GenAI, while remaining the world's GenAI leader.

In August, the state partnered with NVIDIA to launch a first-of-its-kind AI collaboration and earlier co-hosted a GenAI summit with leaders to discuss how the state can best use this transformative technology on behalf of Californians. In September, Governor Newsom convened the world's leading experts on GenAI to help California develop workable guardrails for deploying GenAI, focusing on developing an empirical, science-based trajectory analysis of frontier models and their capabilities and attendant risks.

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This year, Governor Newsom also signed a series of bills to crack down on sexually explicit deepfakes and require AI watermarking, protect performers' digital likenesses, and combat deepfake election content.

Learn more

The state also launched a new website focused on the GenAI work happening across state government. The new site serves as a one-stop resource for state staff, the innovator community, and those following California's nation-leading progress on testing opportunities to safely and responsibly use GenAI tools to address current challenges.

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