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Residents and council members question mandatory AI training and Copilot rollout
Summary
A resident witness and OCTO exchanged sharply over a citywide mandatory AI training and the Copilot rollout; the resident estimated $2.22M in lost staff time, while OCTO said training content was provided at no direct cost and the rollout followed a pilot approach.
A resident witness who appeared on the OCTO panel criticized the city's mandatory AI training for all government employees and contractors and urged the council to reassess the rollout and measure actual impact on residents. The witness said she supports oversight and testing of automated systems and urged usability testing of critical services such as the SNAP application.
"The mayor called this a no cost mandate, but that's roughly $2,223,083 of taxpayer funded time," the witness said, describing her calculation after taking the training herself. She also criticized the AI Values Alignment Advisory Group for not meeting publicly since 2024, and said critical services remain hard to use and inaccessible to some residents.
OCTO Director Stephen Miller defended the city's approach, saying the training "was no cost for the district" in terms of procurement of the training itself but acknowledged that staff time to take the class represents an unbudgeted cost. Miller described a pilot-and-scale approach for Copilot Chat and said the city prioritized a secure government tenant and staged rollouts to identify appropriate use groups.
The committee asked OCTO to provide the advisory group's meeting schedule, training materials, and a profile of Copilot's current user base so members can assess costs and oversight mechanisms.
