One set of figures comes shining through from the AI tracker survey I carried out at the tail end of winter.
That’s having a policy.
A policy is the organisation having a set of guard rails to give safety, confidence and direction.
In the most recent tracker survey I carried out, almost two thirds of public sector comms people say that their organisation has a policy.
This is a significant shift since the summer.
Why is having an AI policy important?
If you have a policy, you have guard rails.
But having a policy drawn-up on its own does not mean that the problem has been solved.
But that’s a step on the journey not a destination.
Many commentators have rightly pointed out that everyone who uses technology as a minimum needs to have Blue Peter-style AI basics training.
In the 1990s, we had desktop publishing courses as a matter of course.
Thirty years later, we need the same for AI.
But the shift towards organisations having policies starts to close the era of AI Wild West when anyone could technically do anything. How can you take action against someone on how they use AI if you don’t have an AI policy?
Not just that but how can you encourage people to use AI well if you don’t have a policy?
I’ll be blogging the results of the AI tracker survey in the coming weeks.
For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape.
ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS
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Creative commons credit: Retro computer by Adam Podstawczyński.