An expert in artificial intelligence said Cincinnati is currently earning a nearly failing grade on its preparedness for AI, but there’s still time to catch up.
Cincinnati City Council members listened to a presentation from Rob Richardson, founder of Disruption Now, a company that teaches artificial intelligence training for education, government and businesses at the Economic and Cultural Opportunity meeting, Monday.
Council members said they will review how AI policies in other cities work to see whether Cincinnati could adopt them.
Councilman Seth Walsh asked Richardson to grade the city on a scale of A to F for its willingness to embrace AI.
Richardson gave the city a D-minus.
“I know that it’s difficult to sometimes look at things that feel like they are distant in the future,” Richardson said. “It’s not just right now; we weren’t doing this, which is setting us behind. We have some time to catch up, but not a lot of time.”
Walsh added that the city has made mistakes in the past and that he didn’t want citizens to miss out on emerging technology.
“Cincinnati is a city of missed chances in many ways,” Walsh said. “And you’re right. We’re saying that, on the precipice, a D-minus is not good enough for the city. We’ve got to move forward. And I think I’ll say, only for myself, that this needs to be a priority for how we incorporate this technology into the city and our functions.”
Richardson told the council that using AI more within the city would help retain talent.
“That involves upskilling. That requires having a central kind of focus on what that looks like,” Richardson said. “As we do development and everything else, what does an investment look like?”
The presentation showed council members ways AI could help improve the time they spend on research, legislation and job growth. He also asked for at least $200,000 and told them about a plan to build a training lab where people could come to learn and practice AI skills.
“Having a focus where people can go in, have computing power, train and leverage. Smaller and emerging businesses will have that opportunity to do it at a lower price,” Richardson said.
He added that what he was asking for was not a data center but a place to offer education to give Cincinnatians a jump-start on the emerging technology.
Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Lemon Kearny was also impressed by the presentation.
“We’ve got to get moving with this; This is really important because it creates jobs, and we know we’re going to lose some jobs to AI,” she said. “We want that net gain of jobs. We want economic opportunity for our citizens.”
Richardson has hosted a large AI and technology conference, Midwest Con, in Cincinnati over the past four years. The convention will be in September of this year.
Richardson has also helped form a task force that includes significant Cincinnati organizations and national technology leaders. Local members include Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Procter & Gamble and the University of Cincinnati. The task force is led by Mayor Aftab Pureval, County Clerk of Courts Pavan Parikh and Eric Jamison, director of performance and data analytics for the city of Cincinnati. The task force is chaired by Richardson.
Richardson said the task force is working to secure national funding at Midwest Con in September, with the overall goal of moving forward with the construction of the AI training hub.