Councillor A. Owodunni joined the meeting at this time.
Dan Murray, Director of Technology Innovation and Services, introduced the strategic session to discuss Artificial Intelligence (AI), as an emerging technology and topic of interest noting that no decisions would be made by Council. D. Murray noted that the Digital Kitchener Lab has been investigating how AI could be used at the City and introduced Courtney Zinn, former Director of the Digital Lab now Manager of Enterprise Resource Planning.
C. Zinn introduced Kevin Tuer, Chief Technology Officer with Communitech, who addressed the national network of Canada's technology network and highlighted the investments made by the City of Kitchener that have furthered growth in the field. The growth of start-ups and scale-ups as it relates to AI and projects to operationalize good AI, with ethics and sense of responsibility in mind were highlighted by K. Tuer.
C. Zinn introduced Professor Jimmy Lin, with the University of Waterloo and Co-Director of Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of Waterloo, who provided a presentation on Generative AI. J. Lin noted his experience with supervised machine learning, and generative AI being two tracks of technologies, one to generate images and the other being large language models including but not limited to ChatGPT, OpenAI, etc.
J. Lin explained the function of ChatGPT as a computer program, or black box, that takes input or prompts and generates an outputs based on those prompts and provided examples of ChatGPT prompts including exam questions, assignments and generates approximately an 80% output. Creation and development of prompts was highlighted. The purpose of autoregressive language modeling (ARLM) or guessing the next word, in ChatGPT was noted. The role of reinforcement learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) in ChatGPT contributes to adding the human element of feedback to assess whether it's an innocuous or toxic response.
Members of Council asked questions regarding the similarities between AI and Boolean searches and received a response from the Presenter.
J. Lin highlighted challenges associated with ChatGPT including hallucinations while stressing the need to foster creative brainstorming. The impact of data scarcity was noted. The expense of computing and need for Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to process the data and the proprietary nature of GPU was highlighted.
Members of Council asked questions regarding the proprietary nature of GPUs, and monopoly on the units and received a response from the Presenter.
J. Lin reported that the alignment of machine language learning to be helpful, harmless, and free from bias is difficult as it can be biased by processes.
Members of Council asked questions regarding the benefits of information collection with how such information is then used by AI, and received a response from the Presenter highlighting the need for accountability and transparency of decision-making and fairness of the models.
Dangers associated with AI were highlighted by J. Lin including a loss of control due to some prevailing thoughts that AI is going to lead to an existential threat, and the concept that AI will create disruption and job loss as roles are replaced with automation.
Councillor P. Singh left the meeting at this time.
J. Lin reported the dangers of disinformation and "deep fakes" and how malicious actors can impact global markets and ruin relationships, and careers given the realism that is possible to achieve when combined with microtargeting.
Councilor P. Singh returned to the meeting at this time.
Members of Council asked questions regarding why agencies are pursuing AI if there is not ethics training in computer science, such harm can occur by malicious actors, dangers of taking out the critical thinking from social science engineering, augmentation of the AI tools available, philosophical discussions regarding the ability to achieve alignment and received responses from the Presenter regarding responsible AI.
Opportunities with general purpose technologies (GPT) like AI were highlighted, including leveraging AI for the use of digitizing patient charting, if used responsibility with privacy guardrails installed, personalized education such as tutoring and information access through large language models (LLMs).
In summary J. Lin noted that increased innovation will lead to increased productivity which will lead to prosperity and expressed the impact that the "wait and see" approach will have on the emerging competitiveness in the global markets.
Members of Council asked questions regarding how the City of Kitchener can partner with technology vendors to leverage data and improve service, implications in upskilling in a unionized environment, sectors that are or can use LLM, and received responses from the Presenter on the next stages in the discussion and Mayor B. Vrbanovic expressed the previous work the City engaged in with the Harvard Bloomberg.
C. Zinn presented on the exploration of AI at the Digital Kitchener Innovation Lab and work undertaken in 2023. The purposes of the Digital Kitchener Innovation Lab were highlighted and C. Zinn noted Lab staff have been learning about emerging technology and prototyping situations. Some AI experiments undertaken at the City where highlighted including Conversational AI, to synthesize data contained in the Municipal Code and Zoning By-law information in a dynamic way for customers, and leveraging Open Data to connect citizens with their community through a Local Guide app. C. Zinn highlighted that the Lab's experience with multi-lingual support, to scan and interact with signage in English and translate it to a different language. The potential for the City to create efficiencies with AI were noted and required actions to be undertaken to ensure that responsible AI is generated.
Members of Council asked questions regarding staffing resources need to expand the City's use of AI, collaborating with area municipalities to further the Digital Lab AI programs, time required to train AI applications, ways to monetize the systems, achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) and received responses from the Presenter and C. Zinn.