According to a senior official, the Chief Administrative Officer’s Office of the House Digital Services has recently prompted congressional offices to experiment with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a popular yet contentious AI generative tool.
The House of Representatives digital services recently acquired 40 licenses for ChatGPT Plus, enabling a new AI working group to test and share AI tools with congressional offices. The licenses were distributed earlier this month.
The acquisition of ChatGPT licenses has prompted discussions about how the government and private sector should manage and control the usage of AI technology. This purchase is believed to be one of the initial initiatives governments took to involve such technologies in their decision-making processes.
The ChatGPT Plus licenses, assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, have been granted to 40 Congressional offices. House Digital Services provides a $20/month per office subscription plan without expiration. Although the details of which offices possess these licenses will remain anonymous for now.
OpenAI recently launched ChatGPT Plus as a subscription plan in February. This new plan offers subscribers uninterrupted chatbot access even during peak usage times and faster response rates.
The official says:
“Oftentimes members are experimenting with things, new tools, in their own ways and we just want to be in the loop on that. We want to help facilitate that experimentation,”
“There are so many different use cases for ChatGPT but what we’ve heard is at the top of the list for Congressional offices is creating and summarizing content.”
The staff has been discouraged from utilizing the chatbot to operate inquiries with Congressional information or any other sensitive internal info due to the firewall blocking it from running within the House of Representatives’ internal server.
The OpenAI tool cannot be used to put code onto Congressional devices. However, it can still be implemented via a web browser or an Application Programming Interface (API) for requests.
The AI tool, as detailed in a recent internal email from the AI Working Group accessed by FedScoop, is expected to be employed for significant operations within congressional offices, such as formulating response drafts for constituents and press releases, condensing lengthy speeches, authoring policy papers and bills; designing office resources logos or graphical.
Daniel Schuman, the policy director at Demand Progress advocacy group and co-founder of the Congressional Data Coalition, is an authority on congressional data.
Daniel Schuman says:
“This is the House getting ahead of the curve to address emerging technology that could really help Congress better serve the public,”
“Everything from making it easier to come with ideas, to summarizing information, to draft letters or documents and handle some aspects of constituent engagement. Ultimately it will allow Congressional staff to scale up more quickly regarding the demands placed on them,”
Congressman Schuman has been instrumental in enacting and drafting a range of tech and accountability-related legislation like the DATA Act, FOIA modernization, and many House rules changes.
In the summer of 2022, the House Digital Services team was created to enhance the user experience for Congress and open up new opportunities for lawmakers to communicate with their constituents. This group was given a broad mandate for these goals.
The members of Congress have faced a bevy of challenges, and it is the responsibility of the team to develop solutions that intuitively address these issues. This effort has been taken up by nonprofit organizations such as TechCongress, with digital service fellowships that look to inject technical skills into the legislative branch.
As lawmakers explore AI use, government agencies attempt to establish guidelines for its application. Generative AI is currently being experimented with to create new norms for its adoption by federal government agencies.
Last month, Dorothy Aronson, National Science Foundation (NSF) Chief Information Officer, stated that the NSF had started exploring potential uses for such tech and creating protective control systems within their organization.
The use of ChatGPT Plus by Congress is an exciting development in AI. It can transform how lawmakers approach policymaking and provide new insights into our country’s most complex issues.
Source: FedScoop
