9 hours Ago
We’d like you to read this, which we received at The Bulletin on Tuesday: “I am writing you to give you the details about our Open House at Bend Fire and Rescue. We are trying to advertise our event to get the families to come be a part of our event. We are excited to invite the media to share information about our upcoming Open House at Bend Fire North Station (305).
This event is a great opportunity for the community to visit our station, learn about fire safety, and see our operations firsthand. We believe it’s crucial for children to engage with firefighters from a young age to build positive relationships with the fire department. Moreover, kids often share what they learn with their families, making this an effective way to promote fire safety throughout the community.
This is a free family event that will be interactive and incredibly fun for the kids.” It sounds like fun. It’s on Sept.
28 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.
m. The station’s address is 63377 NE Jamison St. But to our ear, that paragraph reads like it was written by AI.
And it was apparently written with some help from some program we had not heard of. That’s not a crime, nor a no no. There may be benefits.
After we received the message, we asked some questions. The city of Bend is working on an AI policy. It will apparently be ready next week.
Will the city be telling the public when it uses AI? The short answer appears to be yes. “At this time, with any content generated, the recommended policy states: ‘If AI is used to create a document from scratch or create an image, citing the work as produced with generative AI will help to prevent mistrust with the public and employees,’” Rene Mitchell, the city’s director of communications, told us in an email. State government is wrestling with this issue, too.
Gov. Tina Kotek has asked a committee for policy recommendations about use of AI in state government. There are concerns about equity, privacy, accountability and more.
The state has been discussing publicly sharing steps of the development of AI systems and more. One concern has been how AI may be using an algorithm or other reasoning tool that has some sort of bias built in, which may not be readily apparent. Schools have been struggling with it .
A benefit could be as mundane as time saved on tasks such as transcribing conversations and there are opportunities with much more potent things, prediction markets, biological analysis . The price of electricity may be a limiter. “I hold a little bit of healthy skepticism about all new technologies,” Kotek was quoted by the Oregon Capital Chronicle .
“And I think we all know that AI can bring potential benefits to our society, to how we do business. We just need to be cognizant of what those goals are and what risks we should be aware of and prepare for.” It’s probably too late for the public to weigh in on the initial release of the city of Bend’s “Generative AI Guidelines and Policy.
” But we’ll watch what they come up with and let you know..
