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ISU professor urges McLean County to build AI literacy, warns of rapid change
Summary
Professor Roy Magnuson gave a demonstration of generative AI capabilities and urged McLean County to pursue local education and policy measures to manage risks and opportunities.
Professor Roy Magnuson, director of emerging technology instruction and research at Illinois State University, told the McLean County Executive Committee on May 5 that generative artificial intelligence is entering a phase of rapid capability growth and that local governments should invest in literacy and cautious local policy.
Magnuson presented examples of generative AI — text, voice cloning, image and animation tools — and said the present moment differs from earlier AI developments because models now generate new, bespoke output rather than only predicting outcomes. He showed synthetic text and voice examples and walked the committee through how multimodal models have advanced from GPT-1 through GPT-4 and beyond.
“ChatGPT is 1 of many products,” Magnuson said during the roughly 30-minute presentation. He described generative tools as creating “new data that’s similar to but not identical to the data that it’s trained on,” and highlighted risks including copyright concerns, voice and image deepfakes, and the potential for models to be used in harmful ways. He also described upside scenarios, including faster scientific research and improved accessibility tools.
County staff introduced the presentation as part of a countywide employee education effort. Mr. Nelson, a county staff member who arranged the session, said the county is beginning “our countywide process for employees and, to begin education on AI,” and that the department heads had already seen a version of the presentation.
Magnuson discussed possible futures. He described hypotheticals in which models scale agentic capabilities and multiply learning speed, and he urged a pragmatic, local approach: increase literacy, begin education for staff and the public, and plan local policies rather than waiting for federal action. “We can’t stop,” he said; “we have to face the challenges and embrace the implications.”
Committee members did not take formal action on the presentation; the session ended with an offer from Magnuson to meet for deeper follow-up conversations.
The county said the presentation is part of a broader plan to develop internal training for employees and to evaluate local policy options on security, bias, privacy, and accessibility as AI tools are used in county operations.
