The vice president of the Winthrop Town Council, Suzanne Swope, is floating the idea of using artificial intelligence in municipal government operations, saying it could help produce new ideas and transparency.

In the latest of her regular series of public discussions at the Town Hall, Ms Swope invited Solomon Thompson Jr, the chief executive officer of the software and consulting company Blue Collar Objects, to outline a range of possible roles for his AI product in Winthrop’s town operations.

Mr Thompson described his AI system’s potential contributions as ranging from compiling written summaries of meetings to organizing Winthrop’s processes for deciding its priorities and writing its budget. He put particular emphasis on improving the involvement of residents in their town, and generally offered a promise of helping people and communities survive and compete in an AI-dominated environment.

The Blue Collar Objects system is “using AI to empower the individual to figure out, ‘What do I want, and how can I get there,’” Mr Thompson told Ms Swope’s session.

Ms Swope made no direct commitment at her event to how she might pursue any of Mr Thompson’s ideas, but repeatedly made clear her interest in learning more. And at the regular Town Council meeting on Tuesday, she repeated her hope that the council would pursue the possibility.

“That’s the kind of conversations that we want on a path with this software, so that we can think more in-depth,” Ms Swope said of Mr Thompson’s presentation at her event. “It’s easier for me to talk to Auggie than it is to the Town Council,” she said, referring to the interface that Mr Thompson has created for his AI product.

Can’t refuse

Mr Thompson acknowledged his eagerness to move ahead. “If you want to use it, you will use it,” he told Ms Swope’s public meeting last Wednesday. “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

At least two other Town Council members attended at least part of the meeting, and one of them, Joseph Romano, described some level of interest. At one point, Ms Swope said of Mr Thompson’s AI tool: “You build questions, and it kind of answers you back so you’re in the conversation.” Mr Romano responded: “It’s a great tool.”

Ms Swope and Mr Romano are among five members of the Town Council who have put particular emphasis on finding ways to overcome the ability of the council’s president, Jim Letterie, to drive the council’s agenda – with a key factor being the majority group’s eagerness to uphold the council’s rejection of town compliance with the state’s 3A housing expansion law.

Mr Romano listed at the Swope event some general steps he anticipates the town taking in the direction of improved transparency, including holding all town governmental meetings in the Town Hall’s Harvey room, where they can all be recorded, and generating the prompt creation of transcripts.

‘Scares me’

But one member of the public attending the presentation by Ms Swope and Mr Thompson, John Morgan, a member of the Winthrop Commission on Disabilities, expressed a general concern about AI’s possible introduction into the mix.

“Listening to this just makes me quiver,” Mr Morgan said. “It just scares me to think that with all of the technology, that we’re going to lose ourselves, because we’re going to become dependent on another source of information,” he said.

Person-to-person discussion of issues “generates ideas, it generates feelings,” Mr Morgan said. “This scares me, I have to say,” he said.

Mr Thompson said he shared the feeling of fear. He then offered his assessment that major US companies and powerful individuals are going to use AI regardless, and said that his company is trying to help cope with that reality, including at local levels such as town governments.

Little guy

“I’m with you 100 percent,” Mr Thompson told Mr Morgan. “But the thing is, I know it’s inevitable, because companies and countries will not want to be left behind,” Mr Thompson said. “So they’re going to be moving fast and taking advantage of technology to do what they want to do, and this is a way that the little guy can have a tool to where they can compete with the big guys.”

The discussion reflected a wider debate across the US and beyond. The use of AI is a fast-moving phenomenon in government and virtually all other arenas in society, with avid defenders, determined critics, and many other people mulling its inevitableness and value.

Mr Thompson’s company, based in the suburbs of Washington, DC, is among numerous providers seeking to serve and grow that market. He said his AI product essentially uses the Claude system, developed by Anthropic, a company that was created in 2021 with a promise to confront the dangers to society that it saw AI as posing.

Anthropic is gaining ever more attention recently as the company prepares for a public stock filing its value nears $1 trillion, meaning it could become the largest technology IPOs in market history.

Spreading concerns

AI concerns are spreading well beyond Anthropic. The first US-born pope, Leo XIV, just issued his first encyclical, issuing a broad set of warnings against the direction of AI and calling for greater focus on human needs amid technological change.

And in ongoing signs of the political breadth of the concern, Republican-led Florida just became the first US state to sue OpenAI – Anthropic’s chief competitor – over the design and safety of its AI product ChatGPT, while leading potential Democratic presidential candidate Gavin Newsom has moved from championing AI developers to questioning them.

At the same time, AI continues to grow even more deeply embedded into local governments. An estimated 21 percent of public sector employees in the US use AI multiple times a week, a Gallup poll found.

Even AI itself isn’t sure. Asked about the wisdom of a town such as Winthrop hiring a company such as Blue Collar Objects to improve its operations, OpenAI’s ChatGPT answered: “Possibly, but only under very specific conditions, and I would want much more evidence before spending public money on it,” adding: “The more realistic answer is that AI is a tool that is very useful for some government functions and potentially dangerous for others.” Anthropic’s Claude gave a similarly mixed if more tempered assessment, calling Blue Collar Objects a legitimate and experienced company, while suggesting its assistance might be better limited to software and data solutions rather to addressing broader matters of policy, finance and government.