Fort Myers AI Solves City Problems Fast

A Critical System Failure Tests Fort Myers

The city of Fort Myers faced a significant challenge. In mid-May, the citys utility billing system malfunctioned, rejecting water bill payments. This frustrated residents and led to revenue loss for the city.

Diana Centeno, Fort Myers information technology services (ITS) development operations manager, investigated the problem. She delved into the code governing communication between the citys webpage, the payment provider, and the financial system. However, the original programmer had retired two years prior, and Centeno couldnt reverse engineer the complex code.

ChatGPT Delivers A Rapid Fix

After several frustrating days with no progress, Centeno turned to ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program. She input the problematic code and described the issue.

Within minutes, AI provided an answer and a path to a solution. It identified a setting related to token length and pointed her towards the token provider.

Richard Calkins, director of the citys ITS department, recounted, She reprogrammed it and everything started working. And this happened in a matter of about half a day. Calkins added, That was one of the things where Im just like, Yep, Im sold on it.

Fort Myers Bets Big On AI For City Operations

The it Calkins referred to is ChatGPT, which researchers describe as a highly capable chatbot using machine learning to analyze data and generate responses. Artificial Intelligence, significantly advanced by large language models like OpenAIs ChatGPT two years ago, has been evolving for years, seen in tools like Siri and Alexa. Governments and organizations are increasingly exploring AI, navigating learning curves and ethical considerations. Fort Myers, a city with a rapidly growing population of around 97,000, is actively embracing this AI revolution.

The city has been experimenting with ChatGPT for a year and recently approved funding to expand its use among employees. This involves purchasing 150 enterprise licenses for approximately $72,000. ChatGPT Enterprise is designed for organizations, offering enhanced security, scalability, and administrative control.

AI: A Productivity Multiplier For City Staff

Calkins explained that ChatGPT will serve as a digital assistant, helping staff enhance existing processes and workflows. It will also support research, content writing, and coding tasks. Its primarily just going to be another tool in our toolbox that we use to be more productive with our day to day workloads, he stated.

While this sounds like a simple helper, ChatGPT can empower employees to complete days of complex work in a short time and explore issues more deeply than previously possible. The water bill crisis, a complex coding problem, was largely resolved with a simple AI query. The strategy is to apply this computing power to solve other city challenges.

Exploring Future AI Applications Including Predictive Policing

For instance, the citys police department could use AI to analyze crime statistics and create predictive models. This could inform officers on patrol about potential crime hotspots at specific times, allowing for better preparedness.

That heavy analysis and heavy calculation stuff is really the wheelhouse of an AI, Calkins noted. He highlighted AIs ability to summarize vast datasets in minutes, a task that would take a human days. As a learning system, it can help create best practices, assist with complex documentation, and uncover previously unconsidered problems. Thats productivity, he emphasized.

The AI Debate: Progress vs Preparedness

While productivity gains are lauded, AI advancements also fuel fears of workforce transformation and job displacement. Some warn that unprepared organizations risk obsolescence.

Jim VandeHei, CEO of Axios, wrote in a May 19 column about a stunning lack of preparedness for a technology that could impact everyone and every entity soon. America is facing the biggest, fastest, most consequential technological shift in history at the very moment people have lost faith in the big institutions, he wrote. Making matters worse, most of us feel exhausted before contemplating superhuman intelligence which is often so unimaginable or scary that its easier to ignore than engage. Many are jamming their heads in the sand instead of exploring this new frontier.

A February Pew Research Center report found that 55% of workers rarely or never use AI chatbots, and 29% are unaware of the technology.

Human Oversight: The Key To Responsible AI Use

Calkins stressed that the goal is not just to provide employees with a tool, but to use AI to make city administration more efficient. The city plans to experiment with internal AI-powered chat systems for various departments, such as a virtual HR assistant trained on city policies and handbooks.

Addressing job replacement concerns, Calkins affirmed that humans are still essential for inputting information and critically editing AIs output. This is vital because AI, despite its power, can be unreliable. He cited an instance where national newspapers published AI-generated summer reading lists with non-existent books, an error due to lack of human verification.

Furthermore, in the Fort Myers water bill incident, Centeno received AI guidance but had to perform the actual fix herself. We do not want this to replace any staff, Calkins stated. We want this to augment our staff, to make the people we do have be more productive now. Maybe what that does is take some pressure off of our hiring, but were not going to use it to actually replace any positions.

Phased AI Rollout And Continuous Learning In Fort Myers

A team of 30, including Centeno and Calkins, has been beta-testing the system for the past year, sharing insights and identifying potential issues, emphasizing the human in the loop.

These 30 users will now transition to the enterprise environment, enabling wider and more secure use. Other interested employees must apply through their department director, undergo internal training, and review AI resources. This includes understanding that AI is not infallible.

What we want our users to understand is this technology, while its been around for several years, is still in development, Calkins concluded. Its very powerful, and its getting better every day, but you still have to understand that its intent, its goal, is to give you an answer. So we want to make sure its giving you the right answer.