Last week, AI expert user Micah Gaudet provided an introductory webinar for local government employees who may still be unsure of how to get started using generative AI.

The webinar was presented by SGR, a 26-year-old organization which provides multiple services to local governments and was founded by former Texas city manager Ron Holifield.  The recording is free and is available on the SGR Youtube.com channel. 

We’ve previously written about several of Gaudet’s 2024 AI training webinars for the organization, which are centered on specific areas of government -- for example AI use in human resources and  AI uses for public safety. 

This one is much more basic and is geared to city, county and other public sector employees who have heard a great deal about AI, but still need a basic primer on how to use it. The webinar is largely focused on ChatGPT, although he also mentions several other generative AI tools that he likes to use, as well. 

The webinar was actually filmed in Arizona, often making use of Yuma City and County oriented questions (although the issues could apply to any local government).  Gaudet, the deputy city manager in the City of Maricopa, AZ, does a clear job in showing how a government employee could use ChatGPT to analyze county housing and crime data, look at historical trends and use those to project future possibilities.  Through a step-by-step 45-minute session, he shows how to get ChatGPT to visualize the data in different ways; how to get help with grant applications, and how to use its “deep research” capabilities to take analyses further. 

The webinar is mostly focused on ChatGPT and in answer to a question from the webinar audience, he notes that the ChatGPT- 4.o version is now free, but also explains how paid subscriptions for ChatGPT and other generative AI tools are useful for providing more volume, more chat potential and expanded access to deep research. 

Gaudet emphasizes, as he has in past webinars, the power of generative AI, the significant speed in which it produces answers, its success in suggesting options, and the significant cost-savings that come from the assistance it provides.   He also often comes back to the importance of the involvement of humans to carefully assess the material that’s produced and bring in the insights and perspectives that generative AI tools lack. 

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