ABQ City Council OKs $50K for AI working group despite one councilor's concerns

Albuquerque city councilors voted 7-2 to direct Mayor Tim Keller’s administration to form an artificial intelligence working group to develop policies and find ethical ways the city can use the technology.

The bill allocates $50,000 for the working group that could be comprised of more than 30 people and organizations.

The resolution passed Monday states it will look at “jobs that might be impacted by AI, up-skilling and/or re-skilling possible needs, tools for addressing problems created by AI, bias mitigation protocols, pilot projects, legal and regulatory considerations.”

Councilors Tammy Fiebelkorn and Dan Champine sponsored the resolution. Councilors Renée Grout and Brook Bassan voted against it.

“This is directing the city administration to put together experts from inside the city and outside the city to help us think through how we should employ the use of artificial intelligence,” Fiebelkorn said.

Bassan took exception to how many members were involved in the working group.

“I really have a hard time with the ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ category on this,” Bassan said. “Between stakeholders and city department officials, there are 31 entities or people involved in developing this and while it may be a good thing or not be a good thing to develop an AI policy, I’m having a hard time wanting to pay $50,000 to come up with something that 31 people are eventually going to agree on. ... I’m not able to support this.”

The bill lists 20 entities, including “community members,” “civil rights advocates,” students, researchers and software vendors.

Fiebelkorn pushed back on concerns about the funding and number of involved parties and said the group was important to developing “guardrails” for the city to ethically use the technology.

According to an October 2023 presentation by Bloomberg Philanthropies, “71% of cities are exploring, testing or implementing the use of generative AI.”