 I couldn't be at the meeting, so I am the acting chair again today. Let me just check. Jill Peters? Is Bill on? Hold on. Well, I am on the community month out. Okay, great. So now we actually have not only a quorum of eight, eight is the quorum, but we have a ninth person, and we're expecting a tenth, which is for maybe for the summer bill of homes or a little bit over, and we are doing a little better on attendance. Those who remember the summer months remember them, you know. We'll remember that we had a couple of meetings in which we were going to do. So Brian didn't send out, or Ryan, Brian, Ryan, so we've got to be careful not to lose them. Yeah, let me just set up. Thank you. Thank you. Can I add to the record that Ryan is doing an awesome job at winning this interview? There you go, Ryan. Thank you. Yes, you may have it for the record. Trying. Bring it to the camera. Yes, we appreciate that, Ryan, very much. So we have the welcome review of the agenda. I want to minimize the preparation time and get to the open discussion and use as much as we can for the open discussion because we're really going to be under the gun here. We have three more meetings after this, and our report is not yet not only not in formal form, it's not really completely any kind of an issue form. So we really have to get cracking in that particular thing. I'm just saying that's the thing that I have the most concern about with respect to the agenda. So maybe I should use the, no, I'll do it. Wait a minute. Donna's going to leave. We're going to pull up the next meeting date and time and agenda subject so that Donna is clearly going to be here for that because she's one of the people along with Brian who we've had the most difficulty in fitting in very, very busy schedules that they have for that purpose. I thought a little about what October would look like. I think it has to be a meeting in which we are getting to make clear decisions on various kind of points. And it probably needs to be a longer meeting than three hours. Remember we used to do 12 to four or five whatever it was in an afternoon and that was longer of course than nine to 12, which is only three hours. And I'd like it possible to go back to a 12 to maybe even five just for October because I think that is a very critical meeting and leave the agenda almost entirely about the report without much else in it to do. Not that other things like, of course for the public meeting, so that things aren't important is, but we're under the gun to get this done. So let me ask what is availability of people in October if it were a one to five meeting? What particularly? I mean 12 to five meetings. What particularly? What date? I think what to consider is October 1st will be the Norwich public meeting October 10th will be Manchester and the 17th will be the Tech Jam. So maybe after the 17th? Yeah, or spend the day at the Tech Jam doing a meeting. I don't know if people are going to be there otherwise. I don't know. I'm just trying to open it as to any possibilities that would get us that amount of time. So the answer John is, when are you available? I'm trying to, okay. So I'm trying to now get down to half time in Boston. So I should be here on the 4th and not the 11th. Are we thinking Fridays? I think we're looking at the second half of October, right? Who can do Fridays? The same team. Can people still do Fridays? We cannot. You're never going to be able to have a nice schedule of teaching. You're never going to find the whole half of the way. You're a slave. Okay. That's what we're going to do. It's a terrible last time here. But I was supposed to actually be office at the end of the summer. It was kind of... Yeah. So... I'm absolutely new to this. My name is John Spettner and I'm here on behalf of the secretary of commerce. But I've served on a number of boards and written a number of reports. Is there a way that we could maybe cut down the meeting time by putting together a smaller group to go over the report that might be available and then do a shorter meeting with everyone at that... I mean, five hours is a long... Here's why the answer is more complicated. We haven't made any decisions. This is a decisional meeting, not a writing meeting. And a small group, we have to get... I mean, the power of this group is all of the constituencies represented. But we have to get those people involved in the process and that's what's proved to be very difficult. It isn't possible we could make decisions in under five hours. But I understand why I'm telling you. Or... I think of the... Once you get to the hard subjects around particularly around regulation, there's going to be a fair amount of discussion there. There should be. It's a reasonable... We're not doing it like that. So... So let's go back to see if we can do it and then we'll get alternatives to take the tickets. Can I ask another question about Donna's schedule? Is it possible for you to ever call into a meeting for a portion of a Friday afternoon? Because if that's the case, then I would propose we pick, like, Friday, October 18th or 25th, because I can only come on Friday. On those two specific Fridays, if you want me physically here, that's just the only thing possible for me. So in October, two Fridays are your entire possible time. I could, like, come here all day from eight in the morning to nine at night, if I had to. But I don't want to. But I'm just saying, like, that for me, it's very... I don't know about other people. Maybe she could come on, you know, five in the afternoon till nine at night. That's a good place. If it's Fridays still work for everyone but Donna, then I would say let's just do a Friday and Donna can call in. And for what it's worth, we have been kind of whittling away at pieces. So it's not like... It's not like you haven't had feedback anywhere at all. I think the regulation part is going to be the one where we're going to have... Yeah. And the rest of the thing... And any of the whittling away was what became the core of the group because we never had a quorum for any discussion of that. And that's why... That's the concern that I was trying to get. Yes. I could call in and then I could leave for an hour so that you didn't have any warnings on Friday. I could call in for most of it. Ah, okay. So Friday morning, a longer meeting, starting a little earlier maybe. And that... I will make that work. What are the dates? 18th. How about the 18th from 10 to 3? Then you can stop... I'm gone. I'm out of town. 18th and 25th. Sorry about that. So targeting Friday means losing you? Yeah. For 18th and 25th unfortunately. Even the morning. Yeah. Why don't you do the 11th? Huh? Why not the 11th? The 11th? The 11th I could do. So the 10th is going to be Manchester? That could be good. Well, unless... Yeah, that's okay with me. I don't care. I'll figure it out. Oh, I... People can't do the 11th. I'm going to Manchester. I'm going to stay overnight in Manchester. So I would just have to figure out how long it takes to get back here in the morning. A long time. Two and a half hours? Yeah. So I won't be here at nine. Sorry. 11 in an hour. In the morning. In the morning, but in the afternoon? In the afternoon. Why don't we just do the afternoon and make life a little easier for people? Afternoon. Jane is okay? Yeah, that's all right. Tell us about your afternoon available. On the 11th, I cannot do it. I have a PhD defense. That's a long time. You won't give that up. You can come towards your thesis. So the whole afternoon you're busy. Oh, they take at least three hours. I could call in after. Yeah. Okay. What time are you on? I'm going to let you guys decide, and I will call in. I am not going to call in three to five, but I'm going to spend the other time by calling me in Boston. So on the tech jam, that was an intriguing idea. There was a place for us to meet. Yeah, the tech jam, but again, we're going to run up against the momentation. So that's the 17th from 1 to 230. I don't know, remember these public meetings, there's no requirement all of us be there. So maximum attendance has never been the goal for these things. Please. I can't go to White River, for example, even though I said I could, but I will drive to Manchester, but you can't. For which meeting, said John? The tech jam day. I take it, Brian, it still has the same problem. You're not going to be there with tech jam or anything on that day, right? No, I actually reserved that entire day for the AI task force so that I can go to the tech jam and just be there all day. 17th. All right, let's explore the 17th. I just think it's going to be hard for us to have a working meeting in that environment, especially if there's lots of members of the public who want to engage with us, and then we're trying to make decisions of people who are trying to sling, wanting to talk. No, no, no. I think the answer is that we find a site that's somewhere nearby. We don't actually meet on stage before the task force. Okay, let's explore the 17th. The move we have here. 17th. 17th? I can do the 7th, not so good for me. Not so good for me? No. Wait, what time is 17? After or before? Yes, I know. Are we thinking after or before the talk? So John's talk would be 1 to 2.30. It's not John's talk. It is all about that. It's a public forum. Yeah. But after that? After or before. What's better? Before or after? Before would be cool, because then we could report to people on what we just did that day, and say, like, this morning, we decided these things. What do you think? And then they can react to it. How do you think they'd feel if we said, you know, we spent two hours talking about meeting times, and we did come up with one. Right? No. John and I were talking before, and a lot of you got here, and I said, this won't be the interesting part of the day. Yes. So for the morning or the afternoon, let me go back to that question. Could we do it the morning before? Works for me. Who could be there in the morning? I certainly could be there. So we still don't have enough, though? When? The only person we locked was James in the script. No, I don't. Jill? Yeah. Jill? Jill? You're muted. Come back, Jill. I'm pushing all the buttons. I will come. I will come on the 17th whenever time you decide. Okay. Morning of the 17th. Do we have a quorum, though? Yeah. We've managed it. We're well over quorum today. What time are we talking? 9 to 1.30. Okay. 9 to... To me, of course, we will. This is Ginny County. I can go as early as anybody else. Anybody can do it. And I'm usually... Detection. I've been functional by 6, but... 930 to 130 is fine with me. 930 to 130? Well, whatever our talk starts at. Well, our talk starts at 1. So 9 to 1 is 9 to 1, okay? Okay. 9 to 1. Okay. 9 to 1. 9 to 1 on the 17th. Okay. Everyone's raised their hands again for that. That can make it. And Donna, you can do some telephone making. Okay. You can make it. So you can... I cannot make it. I'm teaching you three classes that day, but I will call in in between. Or I will meet with somebody after and have them tell me what was... This is not a substitute for subcommittee action. I mean, that's kind of the answer to the original discussion of this. This is all of us together. Okay. Let me ask you about another device. I'm looking for devices to make this happen. On the regulation piece, can I ask people who have a proposal with respect to regulation or have a firm position with respect to some regulation that has otherwise been raised to make it known in writing ahead of time? Now, I'm not talking about the subcommittee. I'm talking about all those other people who might come in and say, I'm opposed to regulation. And the first you ever know about it is the 17th of October. I'm trying to get... And I will go out and I will, with Ryan, try to talk to people who haven't been in this process to get them to respond. I want to get people on the record before an indecisional point. It's the notion of regulation, right? We're not talking about a specific regulation. Let's say I say, I don't believe we should have autonomous cars for safety concerns. I think we should redesign the transportation system, and we ought to say that in that report. Because this is a real opportunity. That's just an example. Yeah. And you could say, I'm opposed to that, right? It depends on what the regulation is. Of course, yeah. But I'm trying to find ways to get... You're serving for the extreme libertarian decisions? I am. As far as an extreme socialist position. Or everywhere. No. I'm trying to get people on the record as participatory, number one, and two, with some substance of what that participation is, so that we can get the inclusion of everyone, even though everyone isn't showing up on it. Is that okay? I will design the questions. Yeah. Great. Brian will design the questions. I'll tell him what I think. Or whatever. Okay. Alright. Alright. Let's go down back to the meetings. So we have one member of the public with us today. Could he introduce himself? We have 15 minutes on the agenda for any public comment to be made. But of course, you can just listen and you might chime in later or whatever, but can you first introduce yourself? Sure. My name is Henry Amastati. In September, I took an early retirement from the Mitre Corporation in Bedford, Massachusetts. I support there for 18 years. I was involved in machine learning projects. I was involved in a lot of other projects indirectly because Mitre's involved in many, many AI projects. So I have a good background of six years in AI and going to the Data Science Conference every year since it started and a bunch of other conferences and being at Mitre, they tend to fund you to go to all this stuff. So I'm here. I have my company Operations Monitoring and Analytics. It does machine learning around monitoring of building operations, data center operations, things like that, any kind of operations, really. And I just wanted to get involved in things going on in Vermont and let them handle it the right way. How about task force operations? Well, if we can monitor them then we can analyze them. That would be the ultimate tribute to artificial intelligence, the work is to say. Well, we've come to the point in which the artificial intelligence can produce the reward. Yeah, I also have been doing a lot of reading in this area. I don't know if you guys have a book list of things that might be useful, but there's some of their best ones are weapons of math, destruction, super intelligence, they've got a whole collection. At least speaking of myself, your reading list would be good if you would send it to Ryan. Sure. These are popular books. Here's one. In the field versus more technical. I have those too. There's a lot of minor reports. And minor, by the way, is getting involved in the social impacts of artificial intelligence. So I take it you're not here to make comments so much as to listen and then react to... We need to get on the right page where you guys can go with this because it's a very broad field with 30 implications far beyond borders of Vermont. Yes, we understand that. So I fail to do one thing, it's because we've got a random phase. Now we have all the people that will be here as to go around and do introductions, which is always a good thing for me. So I can't really exactly... Sure. Hi, James Lyall, and I can direct you with these familiar remarks. And I'm just going to turn here on behalf of the secretary. Can I ask a question? Are you likely to be here for the rest of the... Yes. And also helping Ryan with any administrative work that the committee needs as well since we're meeting in the legislation. Okay, great. It's so much better if we have time to do it. I believe that I will meet the basic need for the secretary and if you need it, I've served on a number of boards and provided admins, so if there's no idea, I can help with... The first thing you might help with is that can you get her on the 17th to come and say hello to us? I plan to actually look right around the corner from where Tech Jam is. Can you get the secretary to come and at least meet and greet with me? Sure, yeah. No, she will be... I'm pretty sure she's planning on being there with the governor in the morning so I'll see if she can at least stop him. You guys got to get her game on. But I would be great to be able to brief her. Yeah. Great. Yeah, if you haven't heard anything from the secretary, even from the governor's office, I also liaise on behalf of the agency to the governor's office as well, so I can be of any help. And a number of reports. Including pre-agreements or anything that will come up. I don't know if I'm going to be able to relate that, but I can certainly... I'm not sure all of you have met Ryan. Can you introduce yourself? Sure, yes. I'm Ryan Flanagan. I'm the administrative coordinator for the task force. So, if I knew any questions, I can direct them to the right person. I do the meeting minutes and set up the public hearings as well. Donna Rizzo from the University of Vermont and Civil and Environmental Engineering will teach graduate classes and machine learning. Joe Segali representing the Vermont Agency in Transportation. Mark Holmes, I'm the chief technology officer for the state. John Holmes, I'm with IBM, but I think I'm here for the Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering. I'm a AI person. I'm glad to have more. Brian Cina, I was appointed by the National Association of Social Workers as a social worker with experience in human rights and ethics. And I'm also a state representative. I'm Gene Santos. I'm a professor of computer engineering at Dartmouth College. I work in AI also. I'm John Dooley, a retired justice of the Supreme Court and acting chair today in the absence of Brian Breslin, who is normal in the chair and gives his regrets for not being here. I think part of what happened is the last meeting he couldn't be here and we set this meeting without his participation. And that's what ends up getting gaps in terms of the presence and he has a business meeting every morning at every Monday at this time. And then Joe, do you want to give an introduction? Hi, my name is Joe Martin. I represent Labor and I'm happy to be now President of the United States as we look a lot like the United States. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, thank you all. So we've got next the preparations for the various upcoming events and I'll turn this over to Brian. Again, I think we don't want to put too much time here and do as much as we can on the development of the report part today. So Brian on the various events. Let me just get a slack. Okay, so we just passed we had to talk to Secretary first before anything goes out to the public but the normal with public hearing is good now and it's going to be 545 to 8 I believe and we have to be I'll just check my email again. I think we have to be out at a certain time. Presumably not sex. We have to communicate. Yes, hold on. So we used some time before all of you came before we had a forum to talk about exactly that what we have done so far to promote this one and the answer is that now that we have Brian who's in the agency he's going through the communication people in the agency and they've sent out press notices about this, right? And I was saying from my experience with Lyndon is we need some more personal work on this so I was recommending getting on the phone to the Valley News and talking to them and trying to get somebody to come. Yeah, and that can be done now that it's by the secretary that's fine to do. I can talk to Nate a little bit more about it you might have some contacts but right now we're looking at 5.45 to 8.00 p.m. for the Norwich Public Hearing they need the facility shut down by 8.30 so there's no there's going to be a little bit of idling you can talk a little bit but just everyone needs to be out by 8.30 they said. Okay, and as much press as you can get out and I'm looking at everybody too as the tech people Brian has been affected of getting out the word to the local legislators getting somebody to use what's that? From Forge Forum From Forge Forum Do we have a I guess I might have missed it is there some press release that's been drafted already that was sent out because I just to hurt people say that the agency did this but I didn't see a press release unless I missed it My wife saw one on BT Digger No, sent to me as a member of the task force not to be aggressive about it but it might be out in the public but did we get an email with something for us to share that I can send? I can send that to you too I don't know that's like what you guys have done in the past that would be helpful because I'm not monitoring the media looking for the press release of our group I expect to be given that as a member of the task force to then be able to share as a member of the task force and that's what we had done in the last one so what I will do is if you send me that I will send it to all the representatives in that area including some on the New Hampshire side and then hopefully they can put it on Forge Forum and advertise for us Sounds perfect Yeah I assume Monshire has got I happen to see a program about them in the last week and they were a very active well-going museum with a large constituency and I'm sure that they will publicize it if they haven't already that would be a good source of information Maybe I ask you because you're living that part of the world does the tech jam newsletter get out that way that's a seven day program Okay because that would be another happening I know it's up on their site right now There's a little Oh yeah Is it a Norwich one? Yeah Is it a Norwich one? For the Norwich one The tech jam one is Yeah, the tech jam one Yeah, the tech jam one But I was just wondering if Seven Days works in the eastern part of the state I don't get it probably Is this Will you answer it on the Monshire Museum website? Yeah, I was just trying to figure out I was just trying to figure out if stuff in the eastern part of the state if anyone in Seven Days covers Monshire? Yeah, probably We're going to have a very slow Vermont I can see about that Well, she's usually very She's a big supporter of anything we do You said Yeah It's Seven Days She's the tech jam person that you and I were talking to Sure She's awesome Yeah, and definitely follow up on Monshire Put that on the right Yeah They send out the logs for Monshire And when you get a chance to follow up with you and she can also put you in touch with all of a communications person at the office level also Okay Sounds good Do we know if Brian Breslin is going to that one? I can check on the Doodle Bowl I know that he just faded my nose Yeah, you definitely Yeah I'm disappointed I can't make that one Yeah, well I have to Brian will be telling that one Okay So the typical thing is whoever the presiding gives a bit of an overview of who we are and what we're doing and that's primarily public comment There have been Donna, did you give a Somebody gave a little more substantive orientation Because you weren't there I didn't do it as well I'm sure you did Yeah So John, if one of them was willing to do that it's only about ten minutes to remember it You've got over two hours So that's always useful And then of course the primary thing is get people talking as many as you can in many ways as you can Well, I think when it's time to talk about the substance of that I think the public would want us to do just a little bit more to say where we are So not just Hey, this is what we've been doing but I think at least my Are we ready to talk about that? Okay So my thought would be it's scary because we aren't far enough along but maybe that'll kick us into gear I hope you don't because there's those exact words I was going to say yes We're terrified I was going to tell you But I think if we that the public would probably want to know what the rough readout areas that we're expecting and sort of where we're leaning I don't know if that's appropriate but I think that if anyone is out there watching what we're doing which I'm not sure they are they would say Hey, been at this for a while you know I think this would be an opportunity to say you know here's where we're kind of landing and then let people comment you know to be able to frame it as some extra wet you know we're looking for input but here's what's jelly because I think if we just come back because last tech jam was before we kicked off right but there was some notion we just started You talked about tech jam now we're talking about knowledge Oh, I'm sorry I think it both it both I think that at this point at this juncture we should this far into when we're in the public we should talk about a little bit about our our jelly nineties Well, it's more possible in tech jam because we just spent the morning trying to But even to that even in even at Norwich should we should we have some part that sort of goes a little bit further or no Is it all input? We ended up in the same place at Linden but it was really just leaders that were there but that's exactly what happened we it kind of evolved to where we were heading but we didn't state things up front but I really do think it matters the group of people that are there that says people want to know these people were more interested in exactly what could we do whereas when we were in like Burlington people were more telling us what their fears were So where are we headed? Look at that I'm actually not reading my I mean I did a recommendation for a commission Okay, so my reaction to what you just said is the group in Norwich should decide whether to extend to whether they want to do that that is your last point John that is give a kind of weather report where the group is going So what I'm going to do is tell Ryan about this and let him get in touch with the people that are going to at least communicate by in Slack or email or whatever on that question and decide how to do it It's true I think what Donna said and Lyndon is that as you start going in a subject like this some of the people will give informed and detailed reactions to what they think they want to do but they're a minority the majority of people will come and ask you questions back as well as trying to give you some sense of where they are and the questions are always often coming out of concern you know what will protect my privacy if this is the way it's going to go if we do whatever and so it gets to be somewhat interactive but in that interactive part you do get some from members saying at least what individuals are thinking about where they're going to and that I thought worked works pretty well this one's also going to be recorded right yeah they're each one okay you're going to arrange that yeah you're in a technology and if you can get video of the smiley faces of all the people I didn't even be better we'll do that anyway yeah so what I I would not reach out to or I would reach out to someone else and like the upper valley area for Montshire I don't know see if we have a camera on the staff like at ACCB sure we have and then post it to YouTube we'll do it we'll do it okay just to put who's showing for the Montshire one I mean I will be there you give me a yeah so Montshire I mean it looks like it's going to be 545 to 8 and then we need to be out of the building by 830 yeah we'll be back who's showing who's showing that'll be Brian, Bresland, Gene, Joe and yourself and I just and I just backed out but Gene is taking my place oh no he's there twice I tried and it's October 1st 545 to 8 yeah can anybody else Mark I had a look at my kid's soccer schedule yeah I see what your priority is like well yeah yeah if he has more to drive there's no problem there's no problem oh I think there's more let's see I have you for the third so what when you voted in the poll at the first first I think I should do first first okay good alright so you've got three or four people anyway so you I think that's enough that's typically what it's there's a good chance I'll be there if I can confirm yes okay yes this one should be pretty well attended I would think I hope it'd be like Burlington which was a goal standard so far but we knew and it was going to be tough in the summer and the least popular it's dense but I think it was good to do it particularly when you get the appropriations shares there thanks to so now on to Manchester the 10th the time is what so the time for that one was going to be 445 to 7th and then afterwards I'm not sure anyone wants to go town manager invited us to see the Birdward Academy game versus not Anthony welcome to come I was willing to go for a little bit until and they said like it would come that they would want to have one of us or some of us speak a little bit on there about AI or something I'd be willing to do that but I can't commit to watching an entire sports game physically an entire sports game but I'm willing to show off it's hard for me to imagine that somebody who goes to a football game or is a participant of the sport you're a lot about AI but I at the same time it was the field that they installed the AI treatment system 445 to 7th what's the address address I think I have it and they were asking I believe was if someone would just briefly speak with go up and speak with the newscaster about the work of the task force briefly I think that's what your email said so if there's no one else who can stay for that I'm willing to suck it up and sit through the game and be like here's what the task force is doing see our information at this place online and you know it would be a brief explanation and I would hang out a little longer but I can't just sit through an entire football game so now I'm coming home so this is 7 p.m. is already late and I'm already from Manchester there's a large thing so yeah I can send it to you who else is going who else is going who's going to Manchester I'm glad I'm going just three of us going to Manchester okay I knew it was a little bit and that's why I didn't remember to do it remind us this is my invitation rotation of a business there what is give me the background and get on with Manchester yeah and also what I wanted to say we'll just get up first is I think tracing me can not meet as well oh good that's near him right it is yes and I like that because we need to get him more involved I mean he's the one who's had the most trouble coming all the way to a month earlier for meetings we want him to get involved at the end here okay now remind us the location and the affiliation what caused Manchester when it was my invitation yeah so for the Manchester public meeting Mike Cole Vermont STEM Corps reached out to me just telling us about his project which was an autonomous streaming system for the games uses certain algorithms and then it can depending if it's soccer or this or that it will record the game so he reached out to me he was just interested asking me a few questions and then he mentioned as well that their town manager John O'Keeffe would love to have us for a public hearing so now after that I talked to John and John's willing to send it out to the schools to invite them Brian's sending it out to legislative people so I think it should be well attended as well okay we should give notice on VT Digger you've got a Bennington paper you could probably have a man just a weekly again we should try to get the local papers insert to this and and front porch form would be great yeah so likewise for the other one when you have a press release ready if you would send it out to the group I'm happy to forward it to legislators and other people in that community down there that I know and ask them all to post it on front porch form because then that's what happened the northeast kingdom even though a lot of people didn't come a lot of people heard about it I would expect that for these two we're going to have more people show up just because the nature of them so that would be great is there a way for people to submit comments online as well like if you want if you can't show up you can submit your comments and then we track them or not we have gotten some right that have come in but I don't know the specifics of how I like the idea though maybe what we do is once that we have a draft report ready maybe we have a public comment period where we advertise that from like November 1st until December 1st or whatever there's a public comment period where and we encourage people to send comment because the state does that for other things it's just easier maybe at the bottom of the press release just say like if you can't show up a person that want to submit an auto if you use the linden press release it gave contacts but do you have a way yeah for more information submit comments yeah for more information you could contact and you can send other comments I believe that was at the bottom of the press release but they weren't online or anything it was just another auto way making comments and writing also would help I think that's what it was and so when we came we were informed about that okay so there must be some literature or something or I know I sent out an article earlier about their system I don't know Brian sent it out as well but I can find a link to their site I don't remember that but that's doing it again would be helpful sure anything else about Manchester we've talked now about considerably now TechGam is one of which is there a different expectation John Cone you're the one who's been talking with them then a normal public hearing just what I was brought up of the context of the other ones is that I think that there are a couple of people who have been paying attention to what we've been doing or expecting something so I think that we should lean a little bit more into recommendations with the idea of getting comment so I think it should just be here's why we were founded almost a year ago what do you think we should say here's what we've done and here's where we're thinking and allow people to help us agree with that I think we have to yeah I would say there's some areas where there is agreement if we look over what we did so just being clear like we've come to these conclusions and in these areas we're still you know because then that gives people a real meaningful chance to influence our decision because then they can weigh in and also people still have the chance if we've come to we've come to agreement but people disagree it still gives them a chance that's a perfect time but then they can actually comment on that I think we have some concrete stuff you know we're talking about an ongoing presence we're talking about an ethics document that is rooted in other you know into the EU stuff for now to follow but I think that there's some more you know technical stuff that we would want to hit on like you said and then let them say yeah or no you know that's what we want can we say that it would be part of the meeting that we've now set for nine is that what we said and location at the end of that to choose somebody to be the speaker of that and then try to get a little bit at least a consensus is that all right but I think we better be well we better be prepared before that day for an outline I mean I think we can wing it from four bullet points I'm more concerned about and maybe hopefully we get some time today for your discussions to sort of start framing that so we don't have to say here's our ethics documents we're saying here's what we're going to do about it so I don't think we would we would be well served to try to you know come into that morning meeting with a blank sheet and say what we would say tell them no I'm not I'm not saying that how do you mean I think we ought to be better prepared than that well the meeting today will get us to as far as we okay yeah that's what we want okay hopefully a little plus whatever comes up whatever is done in that morning meeting I'm trying to get the content from the morning meeting and then which may be more specific into the afternoon correct okay anything else we should know about that it looked like you well I did I just really like this idea and not to go in even if things are decided on the morning of that meeting to not necessarily give too much detail I understand that there is a risk going it gives them a more concrete place to provide feedback on their concerns and I think that the form is quite different so this is tech jam gets a lot of people there so if you thought you remember at the generator thing I was like oh man it was kind of quiet and stuff like that you guys were all like oh no there were a lot of people last year tech jam Joe how long was that panel was it an hour or an hour and a half last year it was it was a lot of people it was a rowdy crowd really great a rowdy crowd yeah there were a couple of people who had a really strong act there were a couple of people at the inappropriate you know like do you remember that woman who was trying to make it about her job oh my god if not not in a production not in a show people thought Burlington was going to be but the people at Burlington had really had why they were so impressed so it was more passionate they just had thought long and hard or had careers that involved they had issues I dare you see it would be a packed different crew whether it was must have been over a hundred hundred people something like that and that we will have to shut it down in the end so how about every project there's nothing in competition I don't know what the agenda of tech jam looks like I didn't go five years so this is the activity at that time at the only activity in tech jam probably not I mean there's so we're definitely competing in robots in robots but I have a sense that there's enough public interest in this and since Kathy is the organizer of tech jam and this will get well boosted and it'll be fun I think it'll be fun and rally it'll be a nice finale yeah so that being said I'm wondering if we might use our time today to and I don't know exactly how we use it but use our time today in a way that sets us up for these upcoming meetings in terms of like clarifying what are some areas of agreement that we can definitively report on and what remains to be worked on we may not resolve that stuff today because of the time limits and so we just make it that at our tech jam meeting that's what we focus on because what I want to be cautious about is I feel like sometimes we repeat our conversation over during our time but I don't think we need to do that anymore we need to just be like what do we agree on what don't we and let's work that out or document the disagreement that's where I think we're at I was about to turn us into exactly that discussion great I just want to be sure that there's nothing more to say about any of these three public meetings hearing nothing and giving you at least 10 seconds to react I'm excited it's great let's go into it public meetings here's where I understand we are on the development of the report we have three parts of the report that we have a subcommittee or a person working on remember here's what the report is and I'm just read this quickly because they're short I want to summary the current development I'm going to work on that but that's more just here's where the facts are and not a place where we need to agree or not on a recommendation a proposal definition of artificial intelligence if needed we've gotten to a point I think we're reasonably comfortable in the one we're using but in any event that's not the highest priority and then the three most difficult ones a proposal for state regulation of artificial intelligence if needed a proposal for the responsible and ethical development of artificial intelligence in the state including an identification of potential risks and benefits from this development and a recommendation whether the general assembly should establish a permanent commission and study the artificial intelligence field the latter grind five I've been working on I have more detail into what I suggest we say there in a memo I did yesterday or the day before and then yesterday and there are copies of that around and we should discuss that but the ones that that's the furthest along in any event the ones the next furthest along is a proposal for the responsible and ethical development of artificial intelligence which has turned into among the people who have talked about this before is the acceptance and promotion of an ethics and then the more difficult one for which there was a subcommittee established after last meeting that I guess met then and a proposal to state regulation of artificial intelligence if needed one other thing I would say is that there are other parts of the legislation that suggests other things that we should report on and we went through a little discussion of that I also did a memo on that and the one that people seem to want to report on was whether there should be state promotion of artificial intelligence as an economic opportunity in the month and what kinds of things the state ought to consider for purposes of encouraging, supporting or even subsidizing that so that would actually be an essence of sixth part of the report but it's not in the section of the legislation that gives you part of the report so I think we've got to deal with these first and then go into that now is everybody satisfied with that summary of where we are? okay again I wouldn't do mine first let's see if we can get a report of where we are in ethics because this subject I don't think ever was at a quorum nothing was at a quorum meeting and what had where we were before and what we need to do to bring that conclusion so I don't remember but Brian was the leader I think of this one can I ask like a logistical question is there a way I can access the internet in this building because because I can never get it to work and so it's like always stressful and hard for me to access things but I'll try again maybe today okay we have a techie person who was here by the way I got the call starting the meeting and went back upstairs well is this the pathway of helping this this is a the SOV the public way this guy is working it is working now yeah I'm using the NCI yeah oh okay let's see it'll take me one like literally seconds if it works usually when I try to use it see it says you're not connected to the internet okay you're on the ethical you're on the ethics this is for him for right you're on the ethics subject you're doing this for Brian Go ahead and do me a favor. I think you have a long way to go. Turn back on. Go forget this name. I think you have bad credentials. Go ahead and put SOV. SOV. SOV. Yeah. So Brian just trying to figure out the, he crafted and Dona did some edits on a, at least at one page summary. I think it was one pages right? Yeah. Those are really nice. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. It's on slide, right? Yeah. And so for everybody gets on the other piece. I think I, yeah. I think actually I printed out a piece of that. But everything got thrown up. I got propped. And so everything's out of order. So finding anything is now. So if I can't get it on my computer a minute. If someone else who has access, and has the document pulled up, I'd be happy to review it. I did it out somewhere. Here we go. Do you just want to read it? Yeah. And just like review for people, or maybe like I could review it, and then someone could forward it to the group. If it hasn't happened yet. Did we forward it? We put it up, but we couldn't. I hope we still have it on. I have it. What's the best way to get it? Or do you want me to read it out? Like it's singing. How about you sing it, and I'll interpret advance to it. Okay, there we go. That's so funny. I always say that. I'm ready. Did you work? I give up. I give up. There we go. I was going to act it out as you read it. Okay. Vermont Code of Ethics, or Artificial Intelligence Propose. Okay. Fundamental rights. Human dignity. AI technology. Develops such that it respects. Such that they respect, serve and protect human personal and cultural sense of identity, physical and mental integrity, and satisfaction of basic needs. Individual freedom. Human should have freedom to make life decisions for themselves without sovereign intrusion, except to ensure that individuals or people at risk of exclusion have equal right to AI's benefits and opportunities. Respect for democracy, justice and law. AI systems should serve to maintain and promote democratic processes to honor the rule of law and to respect the values and life choices of individuals. Have you ever thought of a career in politics? Equality. I just summarized what the EEU did. I didn't make this up. All right. That's great. Equality, non-discrimination and solidarity. Equal respect for the moral worth and dignity of all human beings must be ensured by development of AI systems whose operations cannot generate unfairly biased outputs. Citizens' rights. AI technology shall not afringe upon the wide array of citizens' rights, including the right to vote, the right to good administration or access to public documents, and the right to petition the administration. So those are the fundamental rights. Human dignity, individual freedom, respect for democracy, justice and law, equality, non-discrimination and solidarity, and citizens' rights. So then there's a section on principles that underlie these rights. Respect for human autonomy, prevention of harm, fairness, and explicability. And there's a one-sentence explanation for each of those. So for respect for human autonomy, humans interacting with AI systems must be able to keep full and effective self-determination over themselves and be able to partake in the democratic process. Prevention of harm. AI systems should neither cause nor exacerbate harm or otherwise adversely affect human beings, the natural environment, and all living beings. Fairness. I just thought maybe someday we'd need to add other machines, but maybe we're not there yet. Fairness. The development, deployment, and use of AI systems must be fair, ensuring equal and justice distribution of both benefits and costs, and ensuring that individuals and groups are free from unfair bias, discrimination, and stigmatization. Explicability. AI processes need to be transparent. The abilities and purpose of AI systems openly communicated and decisions to the extent possible, explainable to those directly and indirectly affected. So those are the four principles. And then there's requirements of AI. Do you want to read that section? Sure. It feels like a face-up of a Passover. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Parts of AI. Requirements. Human agency and oversight, including fundamental rights. Human agency and human oversight. That doesn't make complete sense. Yeah, these are... They're not... Okay, technical robustness and safety, including resilience to attack and security, fallback plan, general safety, accuracy, reliability, reproducibility. Privacy and data governance, including respect for privacy, quality, and integrity of data and access to data. Transparency, including traceability, explainability, and communication. Diversity, non-discrimination, and fairness, including the avoidance of unfair bias, accessibility, universal design, and stakeholder participation. Societal and environmental well-being, including sustainability and environmental friendliness. Social impact society and democracy. And accountability, including auditability, minimization, and reporting of negative impact trade-offs and redress. And so just in closing on this piece, this is a summary that was created from a model code of ethics from the European Union. And that document was like 40 pages long with lots of information, and it had like 60... And I'm throwing numbers out there that don't quote me in general public watching, but like 60-something references, you know, guiding that. So what we really have done is we've decided to use the European code of ethics as our foundation and to summarize their work into a one-page, simple document so that it's clearer but that if people wanted to dig into this and as we build our online archive of our work, it'll be easier for people to do this. If people wanted to dig in, you can look at the source of this and the source of that source because this is... We are not reinventing the wheel. We're basing our work on global efforts to come up with ethics around the development of AI. So I really appreciate you doing this. Three quick comments. One is that comment about we are basing this on the evolving standard and you, I think you'd go up front so somebody doesn't go through it and go, who are these guys? That was the suggestion I made in the email. I just said let's look at that. Put that on top. I think the idea is that we're doing this because that's the best laid-out thing and as our country converges, we would want to stay alive or even lead. I would like to say in the break the little state thing and three, I would say that in this standing committee, it will be their role to track and influence this as it goes forward. Do you stand by commission? Do you stand by whatever? Yeah, okay. What I've never totally understood and maybe it's because we haven't discussed it or whatever it is, exactly what is the significance of this code of ethics? Is this aspirational? Is it applied to development of AI only in Vermont or is it AI that's developed anywhere and is used in Vermont in some kind of application or whatever? Is there any regulatory command from this code of ethics? If it is, what is that regulatory command? Some of these things, of course, like transparencies are. Nobody should use AI for which the algorithm and method of machine learning is not transparent or whatever you want to say, just whatever that is. That would be a command that you want AI to have these features but you don't make it a command is another thing. Codes of ethics are things that come typically in regulations of professionals. So I think actually, maybe I think social workers have a code of ethics, lawyers have a code of ethics, engineers have a code of ethics. You can lose your license to do things if you don't abide by it or have done that. That would make sense as to somebody who is creating an AI application in Vermont. It wouldn't make as much sense for somebody who's simply done an AI application which is now being used in Vermont since I don't know how you have any jurisdiction over the maker or anything. So I'm more caught up with what is the actual real world significance of a code of ethics? What do they apply to? Well, it's all those things. Who do they apply to? What is their force? What comes of it? I'm curious as to, given your background and your thoughts, because we have a bill of rights within the state. We've got a federal bill of rights. We've got a state bill of rights. Is there a need to normalize the impact or consider the impact of AI to amend our state bill of rights that what we're... And now you're talking about the Constitution? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, states... Wow. I mean, it's just a thought. No, I'm not saying that we would make that recommendation here within this committee, but maybe a code of ethics is a starting point for a conversation that could lead that way is kind of what my thought is, right? Like, once this commission is... our study commission is over, we're going to recommend that other people get more actionable, you know, avenues of this. And one of them may be, like, you know, what do we need to do constitutionally to consider AI? So, Constitution, of course, is a very, very, very difficult thing to... I know. That's why I've never said it. In the line you're going, you might say this. I mean, this is a way to answer some of the questions we did, but the test was recommended that the Montreal Assembly adopt this code of ethics that we have described here and implement it by appropriate legislation that it decides is necessary for implementation period. And that way, the code of ethics sort of becomes the moral standard and the philosophical and policy standard for what legislation might be. That's its real effect. Donna was trying to say something. And I'm more okay with this direction. But I was viewing this and maybe it is because in civil environmental engineering we have a code of ethics. We have a... We're trying to get this spill over into mechanical and electrical engineering, but I mean civil engineering because people's lives are at risk when you build something, you've had this people that are very aware of that. And that's more my reason for doing this right now. I hope it will evolve to making more... But that wasn't my understanding. So professional regulation should be part of it. It could evolve to professional regulation, but we in civil engineering, there isn't regulations. There's just a... To me, I wanted to attract a lot of people in Vermont. I want them to have this philosophical... We can't stop or regulate the AI that's going to happen everywhere in the country and impact Vermont. It was more... I can't use the word marketing, but is there a better word? You know one of the things that isn't coming out as strongly in the sort of proto-recommendations that these codes of ethics are as much education is that when we train people whether they're coming through our universities, whether they're incorporating in our state whether they're trying to do business here is that by having the conversation about something like that you start to have people think. So for example, and I think there's been lots of debate on professional certification. I think there's the hammer and the stick. You can put a censure if somebody violates this but the real thing is to get people to think about it. Like the unintended consequences of technology choices is something that's never taught, really. And if you just have the conversation to say here's the code of ethics congratulations, you're able to practice in the state, read this just by having that conversation you've introduced the thought. I think that there's an active part of education in writing these guidelines. They're not so much, you know, there's no punitive there's no team in them but by explaining to people like I hadn't thought about that. Things like fairness happen, fairness problems happen because not because somebody is intentionally trying to be unfair it's because they never thought of it. So I think these things can be very effective. And sorry it's just that we now require UVM, we require students to take ethics if they're going into computer science and it's more because the field like of civil engineering evolved that way environmental engineering as well. There wasn't a need in computer science prior to this to have that. So it's how do we start that process and really put Vermont on the stage to say that we are going to be one of the leaders in this without going directly to the regulatory arena right over there. So that last sentence suggests to me that and I know Gene wants to talk about it but the ethics code relates to education and development of AI in Vermont if the Brownton police department wants to take a very very aggressive facial recognition software and buy it and use it for law enforcement the ethics code has nothing to do with that. Who said that? That's what I'm trying to get. That's why I'm trying to get but you said not the regulation side. They are separate issues. One doesn't preclude the other. So that's the regulator for this question yet to hand. That's the way you would look at it. But this ethics side does in fact only apply to development within Vermont or educational system or people who are educated in Vermont. What I was here to talk but what I was hearing from you two wasn't exclusive it was just that an important role of this would be in education. You weren't even touching upon the other stuff yet. I'd like to talk about the other stuff after Gene speaks because you've been waiting. I agree with all this and I just want to add on top and this comes back to you and I had a brief discussion a long time ago. It was about the aspirational thing this leads in to aspirational regulation. I know it sounds kind of silly and boxy but here's an opportunity with the ethics code of the place this is how we go about like for example I say that some particular talent wants to use facial recognition. How you deploy them. How you guide them. This ethic piece gives us the framework of these are the things you should think about if you're going to go for it. It also gives you the piece of what you plan to. It's actually both potential regulation and future policy. I remember you talked a while ago and I use this example when people ask me transportation how does it change the rural areas. How does it change for Vermont social good or social good in general. These ethic guidelines it's the boundary policies on that. I personally think it could spawn jobs and workforce which is what I'm interested in. I know that. That's why I'm trying to it is important that we have a kind of logic tree about where we're going here. That's all I'm trying to do is discipline that without being suggesting one where another is the right answer for it. That's at least what I'm trying to do. I wanted to say something but I wanted to I wanted to let everyone else who wanted to speak first so when I think about this I think about what we might recommend I see I am thinking of it from a legislative angle like what bill might come out of this report and I see something that has different sections like the beginning being a legislative intent and what's the purpose of all this. I would think in our report we would want to talk about if we make recommendations what are we aiming at what is the intent of this task force to begin with and what are we suggesting and the way I see it is creating some method for public engagement on an ongoing basis to guide the policy related to AI development that's in a very general sense so it's not as specific as education or enforcement and all these in a general sense it's like how do we guide the ethical development of AI like how do we guide policy one of the big things us doing is this code of ethics or proposed code of ethics that might be put into law like there might be a law pass that says here is the Vermont code of ethics for AI development and then this as it applies to who in very general sense and then saying here is the this is just me talking just to put it into some kind of structure it might be like here's the code of ethics good for AI it's very general sense and here is the body responsible for taking care of this whether it be the chief technology officer in conjunction with an advisory council or a task force or a commission or whatever you want to however we become structured that that body be given by us a code of ethics to work with in the powers and duties the idea being like the body that exists or existing body that takes this on AI group AI task force, AI commission here's the code of ethics to think about further and to consider how do you apply this and so we aren't saying this is exactly how it should be applied but we're saying that a group or a person or someone should take on this piece of looking at this code of ethics and considering how it should be applied as we move forward and that could be that we talk about how it's used in education it could be that there's someone with the ability to step in like a rule making body or a person in the executive branch whose job it is to step in if the ethics are being violated with a rule like is it that the governor does an executive order that someone in Vermont is blatantly violating these ethics or is it that some state agency can step in and say stop until the legislature weighs in which happens and it happens in other areas I can give you examples if you really wanted them different ways that this happens already in other policy areas I think examples would be helpful well I'll give you one quick one there's this thing called an association health plan it's a kind of health insurance that emerged as the federal government was chipping away at the affordable care act and allowing more exemptions the Chamber of Commerce in Vermont started working with small businesses to create this health plan on the side of the other health plans and it started siphoning people out and destabilizing the health care marketplace and so there was debate around should the executive branch step in and stop it or not but then the legislature I'm really summarizing this quickly stepped in and said we had a big debate in order whether or not to stop these or not and then there were court cases that said that they were violating the law so there's all this stuff that went on but the point is there were all these like people to weigh in you have the executive branch who had the ability to step in and say stop which I think they did they said everybody stop to the legislature like we're not going to take this from anyone you can't do any more of this until the legislature figures it out then the legislature waited and then the courts were weighing in so you had all three branches of government weighing in and so if something happened in AI now this might happen from other angles but what we're looking at is there's some guiding central place monitoring it and being proactive versus reactive and so back to what I was saying the code of ethics would be a guiding document that some body or group of people would be responsible for just keeping an eye on and then they could decide as they go what they recommend in terms of like what goes beyond ethics to rules, regulations or laws because there's processes for all those things I guess that's what I'm getting at so like I see the ethics document being very general and so we might identify some areas like we might say let's look at in the future how this could be used in education, how it could be used in business, how it could be used in science, development so if I can because I think like as everybody talks I start to put blocks and things together my head's like a Lego machine or something but so I think what you're suggesting is that there's an aspirational statement at the top if you look at what we have sort of siphoned all these conversations into I think we've got essentially three towers meaning that we've got economic or industrial we've got things that fall into sort of privacy and well privacy and rights and then another is just sort of how are we using AI within the services sector to provide greater public good so each of those may at some point have their own specific needs for a more specific mechanism to employ what are we the code of ethics but they're going to be very tailored to the needs of the group so the legislature may come in and say okay we'll have a statement for the code of ethics but for our needs this is just more of the aspirational I'm trying to draw my Venn diagram here into I think you're kind of getting it right there actually but is this the same? sort of so I haven't put education well do you think of the bodies I was thinking more of like the impact there is? well I sort of was trying to kind of but I'm thinking that to your question of so what you can write a code of ethics it doesn't have any teeth why I was thinking that practically kind of to your Lego thought is in one sense what Lego's yeah so I'm thinking that would guide the commission so the commission could be influencing legislation could be giving advice to whatever else and that code of ethics if we make a recommendation around education that we have some what are we what are we suggesting like K through 12 post secondary how does that actually happen I think that we need to go further and say this is what we intend to do or we propose maybe under their guide and what do we do professional communities but I'm thinking that if we're going to come up with a code of ethics to your point we have to say to what I think something I like this one area that my Lego block had that you don't have there is necessarily areas for us as we're monitors to invest in right so I love it does that come from code of ethics maybe sure sure I like it so kind of around the idea of the branding I guess of Vermont I like that yeah maybe this is leapfrogging a little bit in that Venn diagram but I was thinking when I saw this code of ethics and the structure of it it really brings at least to me more like policy and strategies almost and I was thinking about Vermont how we've had land use goals and those are in statute and those have had really a pretty significant impact over many years and I think about what's in statute with energy which is really driving a lot of what we're doing in many areas right and so when I in code of ethics to me is sort of volunteering in a lot of ways and I'm wondering if this belongs more in statute as this is what the state believes and then over time different regulations and direction kind of gets hung on that and sort of built out and is that the right place to sort of put this or is it just this I mean we started out with a discussion that went but I thought there was a power was advocating for with the education side of things as well but why doesn't education fit under this broader policy you know goal it does obviously I think while we're talking about emphasizing education but I think strategy in terms of you know to your point is I think that idea let's say we build a brand for the place which makes perfect sense to you for greening out or whatever I call it but I do think that the code of ethics is a subset of that this is guiding to that but this for this is a business thought sort of a business well-being thought not business but general well-being this is a you know this is an attributes but this is what would drive something a code of I don't think of a code of ethics driving you know do no harm this is this is good to me in the house but to me these four principles are like goals to me a question to the committees of committee which is of course primarily Brian do we know what EU's got in Canadians did it work to our end in those places do you know where does it sit I mean we have other existing though we have a public member I'm watching but do we know what happened with those governmental units that have adopted one what was the purpose there my understanding is that everyone's in the process right now trying to figure this out we're actually there is but in terms of how it plays out affecting law and policy we're in the early stages of that and so just to be clearly you know I wasn't the most articulate but like what I see us doing back to what Joe was saying is in China some code of ethics is a starting point that's not an end point putting something into statute saying like these are our code of ethics this is how we like it to be done in Vermont regardless of what's happening in and out we want to start the discussion here and then I'm thinking like that within it should be broad it should be all state agencies have to take this into account when they're using AI because then the transportation for example when you're implementing AI you would look and say this technology that we're bringing in from China doesn't really meet our ethics are we going to allow that or not and have that discussion we're not saying you can't use it but we're asking them to have that discussion and in turn will shape our laws and our policies as we develop but for my research there are not definitive laws that I have found yet around AI people are having this discussion right now I don't disagree with any of that but my concern would be that if we start out our first step is into the legislature and the state agencies and everything else that you mentioned that that's our first step then I think we maybe miss an opportunity for you know like the professional folks to step in and say okay what does this mean to us how do we want to adopt this how do we want to empower this like it's going to be basically somebody's going to say okay well this is a world apparently and then we're not necessarily saying that that's why I like the way John has laid this down I keep fighting for the educational component because that's spawning you know people are I think it's both some businesses being spawned out of UVM imagine if some people are raising their hands some people are not I love free flowing discussion but the one point the guidance for people is that we have one member of the public here who keeps raising his hand are you comfortable with him addressing us at this point or is that alright that's my do it too yeah okay you can come to the table actually if you're going to do that it would make it easier for us to do it right and you identified yourself earlier so can I have your name again my name is Henry Amistady Amistady okay alright so Mr. Amistady I will call if you do want to participate you have to raise your hand so I can actually lose him with that but I am but you tend to do that so you raise your hand and go for it yeah so I just like to comment that I mean the EU is leading the way privacy and AI protection so I think it was a good choice to start down there however the EU regulations are unenforceable in many cases that they're trying to figure out how to actually you know pull some of this stuff off also that those regulations are applying to the world not just the EU and in this country you know they wouldn't be applying to just Vermont they'd be applying to the whole country so in a way chopping off some of it and I think it should be a guiding principle but I don't want it to lead us into some of the quagmires that have already been entered into by a lot of organizations in Europe I did post on the Slack that IEEE has a global initiative on ethics and autonomy and intelligence systems IEEE is a standards organization that's many software people use the standards there in the development process so in that way it appeals closer to education and to industry and it may be not going as far out in these guiding principles direction as the Europeans have gone so that I just recommend that people take a look at this code of ethics because we don't want to invent our own code of ethics it's got to be referenceable and I also think that as part of this map over here that there's going to be a lot of what we shouldn't do but that also there should be pilot projects well vetted machine learning the government spending money to do machine learning to enhance efficiency productivity and leading the way by example and by funding this to fund the organizations that ladder is another subject of course I just want to do it Jessica can I ask you what Jessica go first I'll recognize that I'm absolutely new to this and I'm not an expert or technology or artificial intelligence I just I think my hesitation in listening is putting something in the green books that's evolving so quickly just from the brief research that I did before I came here reading a couple of documents even a national group that was put together at the federal level who did some research and had some suggested outcomes something that is in a field that is changing so quickly it just that gives me pause to put something in the green books because then every time the commission or the task force or whoever is permanently created every time there is a shift you have to go back to the legislature so maybe I would even say like pulling back from putting something in the green books would give more flexibility to whatever group is made permanent as everything moves forward oh I'm sorry statutes from a different world sorry is it just to clarify can I ask are you saying from a standpoint of code of ethics it should be an informal guiding document as opposed to a matter of law maybe it's an informal guiding document that the commission adopts or the task force or whatever permanent body maybe it's their mission to use that as their guiding document and maybe update the legislature update Vermont or whoever annually on the progress of AI in Vermont or at the national level or something I'm just trying to think of how so we could do this but not create not cast concrete in the do this in a couple of directions again because it just seems like that makes sense when you put something in the green books into law the only way you change it is with another law and we didn't Brian knows best how that process how long that process can take the latter that is charging with a group coming up with a code of ethics and then using it in the way you specify is much more common than doing it as legislation but there are both examples of both of those kinds of things depends on what you think the importance is what the nature of it is and of course how quickly it gets out of date if you put it in statute and it gets out of date because it's only aspirational law policy anyway you tend to ignore it which is another problem do you mind if I just ask Henry clarify questions were you talking specifically about like GDPR and how that has become law and is unworkable so the one take away totally agree with that because I am trying to do that for my company but the thing that you said that was so powerful to me is instead of having something that is just don't do harm this notion of pilots and the idea let's do some good we're going to go back around to that separate thing about what can the government do to support it maybe even with money Brian? the reason I was suggesting that a code of ethics be if a law is if a piece of legislation is needed to empower a task force or a commission or whoever or a board with this work the reason I was suggesting that code of ethics be included in that is that when you do that you have powers and duties of a group and we could say to them here's your duties but if we don't it would be even less enforceable if we don't have the code of ethics included in that and yes it would be in the green books but every single year the legislature updates the green books like every single year that I've been in the legislature there's an act relating to boards and commissions in which there's housekeeping done every single board and commission whether they're eliminated, shut down their works updated so although one might argue that things are changing fast the reality is that within a year so if we had this is just an argument that fear for things changing fast shouldn't stop us from and ultimately it's not going to be us anyway it's going to be whatever legislative committees take our report up and decide to do what they want to do but my point is that if we created a code of ethics and that body started with that code of ethics and over let's say they started in July and by December they decided that code of ethics needed to be updated they could come back to the legislature in January and say the code of ethics you gave us needs to be updated and then it can easily be updated in that legislative session so although although once things are in the books the books are constantly changed the laws are constantly constantly changed so I don't think fear you really are arguing for the code of ethics to be a law well I don't know I'm just saying that fear of it being a law yeah I would argue the opposite yeah exactly the vision or the mission of this thing that we're creating for right now I'm not saying it couldn't eventually evolve to that but I don't think we're ready at this point can you get back to our legislative charge thank you can you get back to our legislative charge I mean it's not in there could we not say you know I guess it's under part three ZAR this is something that we've come up with and we think it's pretty good whether we're recommending a commission that we've developed that further or possibly suggest that it be put in the statute we're advancing it for consideration do you think the legislature and or future ZAR commission panel whatever consider further developing it and using it for consideration I mean just to bring it back to where our actual charge is I don't think we have to decide we're not being invited to draft legislation so I will be in favor as I think it's great personally we should put it out there I don't think it's up to us to decide where it goes from there I don't think we have to decide that okay that brings me to the point of what the report should look like and how we get to that now I think the way that is most likely to be productive and also reach a concrete and clearing is that we have a discussion like this different points of view come out in the course of the discussion questions come out various issues come out it goes back to the subcommittee and the subcommittee prepares a specific concrete proposal for us for the next time in writing ahead of time and then it gets to a loading stage you don't like something that's said in there then you want to take it out and or not make amendments to it from the standpoint the subcommittee heard the discussion understands where the thinking's gone or not makes the specific thing and that's the whole point of the October meeting we will then vote on it we will vote on the specifics of it including any amendments people want or whatever and that's how we'll get to the result is that an okay process for you if so have we discussed it enough for that process to work we gotta have a thorough discussion for the process to work have we done it enough if not that we have reached the conclusion have we discussed it enough we have for me now for the subcommittee which is primarily Brian have we discussed it enough I have to correct you and I'm saying that that's not true there's an actual I guess it's not you but I don't know what the other people have but can you do a specific draft so it would be like you were in your committee in the legislature and somebody put the language in front of you and now you have to agree on the language so the recommendation is to create legislation no this is the report language this is the final report and I was not speaking on behalf of a group when I was talking about my ideas the group has only agreed that this is a good summary of a proposed code of ethics and that's all our group I don't know if we have to meet any further I think our group is just saying okay if that's the state of the of where we are at this point then I want a subcommittee to do the drafting and present it for October we're under the gun on time what else do we have to do that's what I'm confused about a specific draft that we can vote an actual draft of the report recommendation that we can vote is the report just recommendations or is there like a findings, a research directive the exact detail that we've not gone through either I would like I'm trying to think of getting to the conclusion here is I'd like to get the recommendation clear and then the support of the recommendation can be done thereafter so I think we put a paragraph in front of this and maybe include a diagram like the one we're just super fine and then we suggest the views here that we just sent right before this document that is a one page document I think the language of the code of ethics itself is good I think you're right what you're speaking to is like framing it before so other members of our subcommittee would like to work on the frame initiate that that would be great what was that? like if other people who are on that subcommittee like I took the lead with summarizing the code of ethics I don't want to take the lead with framing the code of ethics it would be nice if other people stepped up and could frame, create the frame create the opening paragraph in our subcommittee because I don't think we need to have a whole meeting over this it would just be the people on the subcommittee someone putting in a little time to do that and sending it out to the rest of us you were making an easier test than I think it is I got it could I suggest we have a I would call it a survey monkey or Google poll whatever you call it to the subcommittee to set up the time for me Ryan I'm sure will help you in every way you need to in order to get to that I think those of us who are not in government just in government we want to call this I have a hard time since you thought framing this is a difficult task I don't know what it means to frame this I I'm happy for that I'm happy for that purpose and join you if Brian is much more full time I'm a retired guy he's a working for jobs guy so I'm happy to give you more time give you time for that purpose okay yeah maybe I can step out then and let other people spend lots of time I just can't dedicate lots of time in meetings discussing it endlessly at this point we can even help yeah I'll volunteer to be in that group well this is a I advise provide references so everything we do is public and you saw that the group like your participation today but in front of the actual drafting you've got a lot of story you can give us comments I know so are we do we understand what the next task is and are we at the point where we can go forward and do it is that alright are you going to organize this is that what you're just I think well I mean is there like a show of hands who wants to be on the framing just to learn fricking is I knew as well just because I you're a framer you kind of want to keep your hands raised I can make it a slack so John Jean I don't think we have an in person meeting I think most of it can be done if it's via email I want to be clear I just don't I have a form with order just this is no longer part of the ethics committee what is this going on we're expanding the ethics committee just not the committee we're going to help us frame the front end and the documents that we've been working on and I think we've agreed to do it via email I think my reaction is maybe a little relatively short telephone conversation with any email I think it's going to be necessary to get on the right direction here before it gets written the writing of this is I'm not going to say easy are we okay now who is the subcommittee now so the subcommittee will be John Jean self Mark and Donna I don't know I'm not sure I don't know I don't know why are you here if someone repeats to me what this was we are trying to come up through a subcommittee with a written report language that includes a recommendation with respect to an ethics code for vote at the October meeting the subcommittee is to come up with a proposed written document and that document will be the proposed report language and it will be discussed and voted at the October meeting with respect to the ethics code now the part that has been done before by the active subcommittee of outlining what the substance of the ethics code should be for sitting here was agreed to by everyone what hasn't yet been agreed to by everyone is what is the use of that what does it mean and we try to come up with some language that expresses that there will be a division I expect that when we finally get the vote on it either those divisions will be worked out or there will be votes for the subcommittee we are going to come to that but this will be getting it in the shape for a definitive vote for the report do you understand yes, okay the active subcommittee was also we thought frankly the work around the impact of artificial intelligence and I am very interested in continuing that and what was listed in the program is the use of committees, thank you okay that reminds me Jail's point about workforces I think workforces have to address also on the report I am treating that at this point as a separate subject it may get in but I don't think the ethics provisions taken from the European Union document that were put in front of us really addressed the subject the subject has to be addressed more separately I think I would agree about why I wanted to continue the preliminary committee okay, I think the code of ethics do touch upon the subject but in a very loose way if you look at some of those principles AI may affect human freedom in ways way beyond the technology and so and I had written I don't know where it is at this point but I had written out a summary of the concerns that I had heard at all public meetings tried to summarize those with respect to workforce development and was the one actually suggested that perhaps we made a few recommendations about how we could at least we know certain jobs are going to go away so how do we prepare Vermont to be ready for that and how should we hoping to train people given the skills necessary without having to go back and get a four year degree right and you know we had some certainly discussion presentation by Stephanie Ciclino and they together with some thoughts about where it should go the world should go never should discuss highway we have more on the board okay is this now at a point where we can move on to the harder regulatory regulation section and the easier do you want a separate new AI commission okay can I just log that yes I think we can go on to those but I think two things that we are not that we keep dropping off one is the education and I don't think we have a group that's really crafting anything on that is that true? that it just came up no it's come up a lot but none of us are self organizing and I think that that's a key piece and I think to Henry and actually was sent and I thought we had uploaded it to Slack to be honest with you it's on that I just uploaded it okay so but I think and we talked about it a little bit last week that I took from your commentary is that I think that the notion of what we will do beyond the sort of code of ethics which is a great thing but what will we do that's proscriptive so what can we what will we propose will happen in education however mechanically that happens and I think your point about the pilots so I think a lot of this is still caged as you know let's minimize the bad impact as opposed to let's do something proactive and show how are the state and I keep feeling that we're not energizing around that like we are around the administrative aspects so we don't know what to do no it's we can do it the following way I think I think we can do it in the following way at the end of the discussion remember we have to do the five that's what the law tells us to do we're focusing on the five but on the table are some things that we want to otherwise say in advising legislature we want to talk about economic opportunities for a month you want to talk about education is a fine one to add to that list as is workforce impacts and wages we want to say something about these subjects in addition to the five that we are telling us we have to talk about is that okay can I add it that way but when adding it that way just remember you've got more work in January one is not so far just remember that okay so on to three now I recall there was a subcommittee now that was created to look at three which is do we recommend regulation if so what and there was a subcommittee I think it even met a bit at the end of the last meeting on do we recommend regulation if so what so I'd call upon whoever is the spokesperson for that subcommittee to give us a report okay next subject who was the who was that subcommittee didn't you meet at the end of the last meeting I'm not on a regulations was that number three yes number three fortunately my computer is frozen frozen what I remember about that piece and this is without looking at any record it was what I recall we missed the first part can you repeat I said as I recall the ethics we didn't say in how to meet okay okay and my recollection though about number three was that we had said it was inconclusive about whether there was any specific regulations needed and that we needed to figure out the code of ethics before we could go there and that's why we were tasked with coming up with a concrete code of ethics that's what I remember I don't remember us having a subcommittee to look at regulations I remember personally I wrote down some things based on our conversation like areas of potential regulation that might be coming up for example motor vehicle related stuff like transportation might recommend changes to the law as they implement autonomous vehicles but we're not ready to make those you know we were looking at the code of ethics right so can I ask a question again back to the specific charge is it to answer the question of whether or not the state should consider or pursue regulation or is it to come up with a system of regulation like I don't think it's quite that here's what we're in three sets we could make recommendations above and give bonus points if we want but icing recall being a more limited is it needed or not but it says a proposal for state regulation of artificial intelligence if needed so at least one thing you'll see in the memo I did about the study one that's five that we clearly discuss a layering that is we'll do the study one and then it might need to change what we're recommending if this you add regulation to this commission but at this point we're just talking about a commission that studies and then that's the first layer the second layer is already you want to add regulation so one of the questions that clearly was on the table was discussed simply and he really is sorry I'm going to turn this off it was do we do we expect the permanent AI commission and I'll read five so you know what that means which is currently thought to be a study commission do you want to give it any regulatory authority or do you want to give the regulatory authority somewhere else in state government digital services they're in the technology business it happens we have the head of the table here I said no but that doesn't mean that he can't be outvoted just like everybody else so do you want to do that so that at least question has had a little bit of discussion as to the part a proposal for state regulation if needed if you say not needed of course it's easy if you do say needed you do end up that might have to say for more specifics than you suggested do we agree that it's needed that what's needed I'm sorry I was going to say I don't necessarily think that that question is stating give us a proposal for regulation it may be actually saying what is your viewpoint as to how we may get to regulation so when I look at three and four together as we just kind of synthesize this whole ethics discussion I think three and four kind of blend in that process because we're saying in that framing of we're going to have an aspirational statement but there's a pathway through this map here at which some point somebody will probably be responsible for legislation somebody will be responsible for how do we educate the next generation or the current generation of technologists who may be applying these technologies and then also how do we take advantage of this within our economy and public services sector so I think those three and four are really kind of together but they really are represented through that map there that we got but is this the way you would address it which is I mean that is a decision the way you address it is out of code of ethics the code of ethics is administered by a commission and the commission to the extent that a regulation is suggested by the application of the code of ethics the commission proposes legislation for that purpose is that the way you want the process to work that's the way that is I think that's kind of where we were in our past discussions I think where we kind of landed was the idea of a code of ethics being used by whoever as a guiding document for rules, regulations and laws as needed but that we weren't saying we were proposing anything specific right now we were just saying hey everyone keep an eye out for this using these principles that's what I thought we were at in the discussion at least is our subcommittee and where there doesn't seem to be clarity yet is are we going to have or are we going to have a task force are we going to have a commission are we going to have something like that to work in state government as a watchdog over this or are we just going to have nothing of that so can I propose a change and a little bit maybe some more radicals that we basically take whatever since we did grow the ethics committee the subcommittee to a larger group that we basically reframe that group to be for lack of better terms for mappings task force well if this is as much as you're going to say about regulation then fine if in fact the answer to the if needed question is it's needed I think you may have to continue separately I think based on our discussions over and over and over everyone does not want I mean we could take a vote right now as to whether yeah exactly because I think we should do that because every time we go down this rabbit hole we can think of specific examples where it might be nice but we're not ready to go there all the testimony that we heard around the medical field all the different types of applications Joe's had a witness on the phone that gave us five different regulations that actually addresses you don't want those you're going to put those on I don't think that's actually our charge I mean again I think that would be sort of bonus points because yes we think regulation is advisable given all the risk benefits bonus points I think it's going above and beyond what the charge is I certainly think we could point the way to the numbers but I think the most fundamental answer to the question is regulation apart and what would that look like I think we could and what I'm hearing is that the answer is we don't get no whether it's required and the permanent commission needs to decide that question is that it? two totally opposite provocative things as I go so one is we're all saying we really haven't come up with it might we want to actually take a more activist stance again kind of pointing to Henry's testimony it was is to say not only do we do we not see that but we would bias towards on something so fast moving as you said it is ill advised that the government we monitor how much we adapt but regulation on something because the particular we're talking about GDPR has been a nightmare good intention absolutely 100% but it's unenforceable and it's creating tens of billions of dollars worth of make work that's not actually achieving the goal it's impeding small business it's companies and really impeding so my question would be would we want to take a provocative stance and say that not only do we not think of that but we think it might be ill advised maybe we don't believe that I'll leave the other provocative that was the easy one so I'm going to jump into the provocative pool I guess I don't know that our since we're going to be talking about a commission and we've acknowledged that you know the we're trying to come up with the people are the point where things are compelled to be done are going to be done later I think what we're doing with this report is essentially framing understanding for the legislature and I think we're also framing sort of the how do we recommend since we are going to land on it there needs to be a permanent commission how do we frame things for them to because they're going to be tasked by the legislature framing essentially their tasking and responsibilities going forward and so I think if we were to talk about I think this is important and then I also think like the roles and we don't want to talk about it now but I'm just throwing it out there or something we talk about the roles of the commission like who's on the commission what are their responsibilities I think those two conversations essentially give us the full framing of the report to the legislature because they don't want from us an in-depth report on what is AI in agriculture in Vermont look like and what can we do with it they want to know like okay AI we know is large what are some of the key areas and how can we start to manage this okay the only thing that's a bit discordant about this discussion to me was that earlier I asked about would the ethics control something like whether some use aggressive facial recognition software in terms of law enforcement and people sort of said oh no that's a matter of regulation that we have to discuss so I just want to be clear that regulation is a big subject with lots of things in it some of them you might say about oh I don't want to I have the heavy hand of government getting into that point and some of them might say privacy is so important to me I do want the heavy hand of government getting into that there are parts of regulation that are in the latter category if you say no that's okay I think the role of the board or that commission has become important because I think part of that commission should be basically creating the initial use cases sort of the boundaries for regulation so maybe that commission needs to have law enforcement person mandated to be on it they maybe need to have a I don't know I can't I don't want to think about all the rules right now but to your question of like at what point do we touch regulation I think it's really through that commission yeah I think I agree with that I don't think we're voting on do we start regulating tomorrow with like a Greek it's like is this something that we should move forward and like if there was no risk benefits there would be no need for code of ethics there would be no need for a commission if the answer is no then like nothing to see here we can close the shop another thing we're not being called upon to say yes this is an area that has lots of risk benefits it does require further study and probably will require some regulation at some point does that mean that we have that ready to go tomorrow when we start shutting down a that's not the question I really think we have to stay focused on the legislative questions and again I think we can go past that and say hey we actually think this code of ethics might be worth considering but like we don't have to answer all these questions and I think sometimes we're over complicating our charge a little bit I also would like to run but I will take the next at the next meeting I look forward to it I knew there was a bunch of lines in there it's good it's good just to quick my charge okay great so when everybody's talking on the same side of the subject which is what seems to be a current here then I want to close it and move on because we have a lot to do is that okay can we close that you've heard the discussions is everybody satisfied with where we're going at this point on this you want me to struggle okay I am going to call you understand the gun war so that's why I'm being careful with you very short very short something maybe in the middle where we say we're not recommending any regulation at this time needs further study however there may be some areas we might want to focus on initially like healthcare autonomous vehicles whatever we think the heavy hitters are there so that these should involve further study okay yeah you know I'm leaving okay two more minutes yeah you might make me late for my new meeting if you make me wait two minutes so make it stand alright you've seen the draft minutes of the last meeting can I have a motion to approve motion to approve yep is there a second any further discussion all those in favor opposed thank you thank you did you want the struggle was it just for that poll right there that was Gene first John second yeah we approved the minutes from last time we approved the minutes before we lost a quorum because Brian left and James left and we now no longer have a quorum we do one two three four five six seven oh and eight alright we did them alright I was so overly cautious I wanted to get it done because Donna is halfway out of her seat she told us ahead of time that she had to leave early so that's why I did that so okay back to where we were I want to discuss five because it's five is becoming more important all the time from the way we're going what is this commission all about what is it going to do what is the things that are important about it now I've been a subcommittee of one trying to develop along the line and I sent you a memo last night with some specifics about what I think now part of it is something I did earlier which is I found that there are two current study commissions in state government which are permanent commissions and can recommend policy development action or whatever it may be they happen to be next to each other or the statute books and they're as different as you can imagine and different from us which is the commission on women is one of them and the other one is the commission on international trade neither of which is our subject but they give you some good they give us kind of a good roadmap of how we would structure this kind of commission so you'll see in the memo I did today I suggested that we say about the and I went through the subjects of structure and membership to whom does the commission record and what are the responsibilities of the commission and made some suggestions about it structure and membership I noticed that the other two standing commissions are very much like this task force they're large they're not small if you were actually doing regulation in particular if you're doing any adjudication they tend to be small so the public utility commission is three people but study kind of commissions are big in general so I think once 10 once 16 we're 14 I think I would suggest a commission of like us 14 or something like that that it have stakeholders this one has representatives of organizations on it it has the common kind of ways that people on the these things get on the governor appoints the governor appoints from a list or a kind of person the legislature appoints was required allowed to appoint senate house but they have to appoint academics that kind of thing is not uncommon and then there are certain kind of stakeholders that come on automatically I don't know that we have to say in any detail about this sort of thing other than to say that there ought to be a diversity it's important it has to be enough size to have diversity you've got to have stakeholders you've got to have experts you've got to have the people who know about this because this after all is primarily study and recommend not regulation so that was the first point that I made just a point of clarification so for us though since we're all going inside of recommending permit commission we are also just making recommendations and then the legislature and this is a subject by the way the legislature bargains over and may be more important than anything else to them you know who's at the table kind of subject and so I would not write detail of this particularly other than to say the things I just said about this size, diverse all this sort of thing if it were me I would for example I think the overlap of the attorney general on data is important and I would have included the attorney general the chief justice of the supreme court appointing somebody by the way for that permanently it's okay for this I think you wouldn't keep these 14 people you would have some differences in regard to representation I know earlier in the task force we had Milo but he went to MIT I believe I saw him this last weekend by the way the hackathon I spent some time with yeah so that's the problem so he's gone now so would we appoint someone new it's like it's a good one at a trial appointment this is your document this is your document I spoke to him Henry can you take some classes I can do it what grade is that role college or post-secondaries one member of a secondary post-secondary who is a secondary a post-secondary student in Vermont appointed by the governor you'd have to go back to the governor we're going to introduce somebody new at this time I think it's a little late I think he had it he said is he able to still participate like in reading stuff or what you don't have you had a conversation with him I haven't had any conversations with him I would say I would say Ryan we need to talk about how to try to make the final meetings as inclusive as possible and one thing we're going to do is one of us or Brian needs to talk with him directly and try to get him at least by phone into the voting part of this I mean when we get to the specific harder stuff and so we've got our post-secondary student just need to get over the table okay so any more discussion about the makeup of what kind of commission we're talking about anything more you want to say about that one really important question is how do you make that squiggle what's squiggle? the section sign? yeah is that a section sign? it's a section? well I thought math mutations had the squiggle it's a section sign I was reading this last night boy are we doing living in a different world just combine it in Microsoft it's a symbol it's a squiggle symbol it's a squiggle symbol and so when I use word I always put in essay whenever I put in essay up shows this sign that's the way I do it because it happens a thousand times in the kind of writing but not in the kind of writing obviously okay so the question is who does the commission report to so there's a lot of study committees and most of them are within agencies and report to agencies but that only makes sense if what you're reporting is something the agency can do or recommendations or whatever and the problem with this subject is it crosses all of them thank you thank you I will see what future events like this I'm not going to the tech gym I'm only going to have to test it I'm taking it with me we are clearly now getting down to a subboard and this one is across as everything kind of thing so there's nobody to report to when you're making particularly now with this you're making recommendations with the legislation and all of that it doesn't make sense that this can be within an agency which is a different question than the administrative support question who we are reporting to are they making regulation recommending yeah depending upon how this comes out in language but I understand it's recommending the so I think what you do is it's both the two study commissions the commission on women and international trade require reporting to everybody the executive, the legislative, the public and maybe specific other people one of them even to members of congress that's of course international trade not this we don't care what Bernie thinks about this right you did at one point not anymore okay so I would just take some language from that and do a generally report to all of those I would continue to have the commission input side that is meeting with the public and getting information from the public I think that that's in the commission on women I would have a specific thing about recommendations for legislation which is of course coming up here and both of those have all of that general stuff the question that's hard the hardest question whether this will ever get adopted is is it free standing doesn't need a direct appropriation how large and interestingly the two models have a totally different approach on this the commission on women is free standing has a office and staff the commission on international trade is really part of the conversation and the legislation I like is it's entitled to staff services the agency of commerce and community development the legislative council and the joint fiscal committee we heard from the joint fiscal committee last time there are the armed local legislature with respect to financial appropriations and taxes and that sort of matters there's a joint committee house and senate and then a significant staff and one of the people came and talked to us about that legislative council is a agency is a part of the legislature also that is effectively the part that does the bill drafting and advice to the committees and to the legislature generally on the drafting and wording of legislation so that's obviously in that direction I have no idea how maybe Jesse can tell how much the staff services you get gets from me because I know nothing about the commission on international so we have an international I'm pretty sure the staff are international trade director so he is paid in that position previously by the agency that could be misspeaking but that would be my best educated guess I've only been at the agency for about a month the commission on women background I used to do boards and commissions for Governor Shumlin so I know a lot about boards and commissions and a lot about establishing those laws but with the like you said Justice Julie with the commission on women they do have an executive director that's a full-time staff person that's a state employee so she is paid and she has some staff so she's paid at the general fund my only caution is that we don't have Ryan forever at ACCD so I would say that from ACCD's perspective if this was brought to ACCD we would ask the legislature for an appropriations for admin if we were included there we only have about 80 staff and in economic development maybe about eight so that would be something that we would ask for again just because Ryan isn't going to unfortunately he couldn't be with us forever but it has to be someone's role and someone has to be paid to do that work so so this is something we should probably say do you talk about an independent commission with its own staff are you talking something that gets staff support from other sources I frankly think this is not very workable entitled to staff services so it goes to the secretary and says I'm entitled to staff certainly it's even worse if you go I have a legislative I'm entitled to staff that my only other thought and not to shake things up too much but there is a different kind of border commission structure that's an advisory board to the governor so he is a certain set of advisory boards they are only gubernatorial appointees so he appoints the entire one which makes it an advisory board to him but that could be another option create an advisory board to the governor on AI they report to everyone but they advise him on artificial intelligence policy do they survive regime change they do but again just like any other gubernatorial appointee they serve at will so they serve as a will in other words they may survive regime change as you've gone and in that way you get we have a recommendation let's say permanent AI commission we have a recommendation that there ought to be certain kind of regulation cause for certain kind of application in consistent with the other standards we go to the governor and the governor says I need regulation and the story so the question is do you have direct access to the legislature with a recommendation the ones that are advising the governor don't they don't they can recommend to the governor but they have no they can't maybe asking both of you so there are all these different alternatives and you researched this well do we have an example of some great examples some terrible examples of anyone we would follow here and some of the bodies that either works for the legislature or work for the government that have been particularly solid and helpful and grown and some of the oppression there's a history here Jessica may know it more there used to be a lot of these things and what happened is that they just atrophied to the point of they were just taking out space in the green books and the result is that they developed the system of sunshine as sun setting yeah I got the wrong side sun setting them because they sort of lose their relevance over a period of time so ones that are actually permanent now remember that's the question of us in the report ones that are actually permanent to study now there's a lot of regulatory commissions out there the public utility commission I gave you as an example most people understand rates and regulation of the utilities to understand what that will do and of course there's a lot that are connected with professions all of the various professions have a board that deals with the licensing and deals with the ethics and the discipline side of it there are many of those around but a pure study commission that's permanent you're down to just these the ones I just talked about they're on it well it also brings to mind I can pull up the legislation but there's a employment individuals with disabilities board and advocacy type I don't know they study and hear from the public and then make recommendations for certain things that one comes to mind most of those are reporting though to an agency head so ones that are actually out there with a broad report to and include recommendations for legislation these two well I was just thinking the groups that I worked with met regularly and they probably again report specifically to the Veterans Affairs Office but they were very involved with the work of Governor Shumlin and same with the employment of individuals with disabilities that group made recommendations to the Governor as well and also direct reporting so there's right now we're talking about guidance to the legislature and the Governor and at some point though you got to imagine there will be laws, policies and things like that set up and my question is do we think that this board will be also at some point responsible for ensuring compliance of the state and compliance could be because if the board turns around and says commission is the word in the statute so I'm using this the commission says there ought to be this regulation and the legislature comes back and say oh yeah we agree, will you do it that question commonly comes so you're in an agency that went through a transformation very much like this originally you were service agent, service department for the rest of state government any of which didn't want your service I understand the history of it here remember I was the secretary of administration so I've lived through that part of the world and then along came, gee we got to get the together and common platforms and common technology and certainly we don't want to spend millions of dollars on stupid systems that don't work so you get regulatory authority I was thinking more of like the E9 on one board though because their responsibility is understanding sort of national level guidelines, technologies that are involved in interfacing with the different states, towns private sector that all kind of engage in there, they got a compliance they got, they had at some point a service provision aspect to them as well so they do more than the study recommend that's the point but my thought, where my head is kind of gone is that I see like down the road this commission as AI technology and privacy issues and regulation everything starts to mature that this commission maybe morphs into something more like the E9 on one board in the vein of like looking at existing committees and boards that kind of we could possibly start the model yeah, that's good that's good to be true so the question is what do we say on the report, now I'm trying to get to the same place that we were talking about getting to with this, which is that I would like to write this up and we would vote on it next time so that's why we're having this discussion on this one, just the same kind of place that we were with the other one I just have one comment about just making sure that whether it's independent or it's housing agency that has the resources it needs yeah, that's what I'm saying like all day today you're really pushing people to write things that they, you know, we're like we're staff here that our task force members are acting like staff in a lot of ways and that's just the way this was set up I guess so they need the resources I was just going to comment that I switched into this role a month ago and the secretary of commerce is on 60 different boards and staffs these and staffs these and so my comment was that if from AC, and this is again looking my way ahead but if ACCD were to comment on this in the legislature in this whole process my comment to the legislature would be if you want us to staff this we need resources and so that's a budget conversation and so just recognize the the resources I also think my bigger point is without the resources it's not going to be effective which is canned no, so either way you have to get the resources and that is that is oh another one of those boards you would think the resource here compared to a couple of billion dollar budget is pretty small but yeah it's the small ones that are the most difficult ones often to get the significant ones and there will be a lot of skepticism about this you know what a way we really need it the sales really is about alright what it will do is what it will do worth it that will be where the sales are and you are back to well this is a critical thing and we have to have a way to have oversight over it constantly monitoring and recommendations as we go along I mentioned earlier that I constantly say you know ADS Digital Services or the CTO the reason I say those kinds of things is because the challenges we are going to run into are not the technology challenges like whether we are using one AI or another or what interfaces we use don't matter as much as what are the privacy impacts what are the commercial impacts so I don't think even though there is a technology that makes it complicated to understand sometimes I don't know that we are in any way the driving you know the person who could drive the bus to better place no I assume not I could say no part of state government can buy anything that involves AI over like your law now over a certain amount of money unless the certification that privacy is adequately protected by the ADS Digital Services privacy is adequately protected not as an AI artist skill so that would be you happen to have a regulatory authority like that but it's not for protecting a value like privacy that's where the problem comes we are getting more involved in the cyber security space that one I see our chief information security officers get more involved in advising local governments all business how to protect themselves this you could probably argue likewise but I think that role was built with that mission in mind so similar to ACCD's issue it would be okay let's define a new role for such an agency and create a new person and fund him or her so I probably would say in view of this discussion that I should do language that talks about an independent commission like the and that it has to go to the legislature and get its resources that would be the way it would be and it's not trying to get them from any you or do they have to be members of the legislature on the commission to access those legislative resources no but I would recommend there be a member on the permanent commission whenever you are recommending legislation you need a sponsor advocate and you know he's not as a legislator he's here for the social worker organization there is really not one I don't want to hear this is a bill that is established it's the theater of this building but I think a permanent commission needs a legislator because you're making recommendations for legislation you need a champion and you also need somebody to help get the appropriations process to get you some money I think that's really critical that you have an effective legislator on that I noticed that the one on international trade has got legislators on it so now we get the responsibilities so it's reporting recommendations we went through some of that including recommendations for legislation and you see I gave a sort of summary of this I would probably expand that a little bit to go over an annual report and specific reports were needed I would require an annual report of executive lands and the public and special reports with developments indicate the needy annual report should be filed at the beginning of each year right before the opening of the legislative session the report should include an overview of the benefits resulting for use of AI generally from negative consequences of a section on use in Vermont generally and within state government should analyze potential and actual consequences in four areas privacy, protection, security, safety and reliability that's as well as job opportunities on waging that question to the extent that negative consequences can be reduced and avoided by legislation commission should recommend that to report on compliance with medical standards and probably choosing an transparency which is one of the ethical standards available that was used it should report on economic opportunity and use as your ways to increase that opportunity through government action including legislation which will specifically identify opportunities for development of AI assisted applications that can be made in Vermont by Johnson income so that's roughly it I might amplify that a bit is that okay? okay five will be a lot easier four three three four okay so let's go jelly is still on okay so we said other subjects not in that five for the report that we want to address one of them I sort of addressed here about the economic opportunity of AI development I don't know whether we want to go further into that subject subsequently we noticed that got raised by our public participant here and it's come up education is another such similar kind of thing we said and certainly workforce and labor impacts our others in a limited amount of time then we got to develop a process of getting a a clear recommendation to go and then to be able to do that and do we have a few minutes to talk about the let's just take the education one as an example so what would we propose I mean you always get us to the right question of what would actually happen who would do something I posted I can't remember the guy's name but he's in the Department of Education found a guy who's responsible he probably know he's the education tech guy Kevin Meehan no but he works for yeah but if we were going to recommend that say there's a curriculum based on our code of ethics you know just some that's not the right place the tech guy is in the right place I know I've been trying to find somebody I guess my question is what would the shape of a recommendation be I'm really struck that I feel that we will have done our job but not made much impact if we come back and say people should be good I really like the idea of actually as a result of our work here putting something in motion and so if we could pilot an education program or pilot a good thing I don't know you know I'm naive when it comes to that you know if we throw it out there and say someone should I know that no one will do anything so what would we do what would let's say I don't know the internal organization we had to engage with the Bible these days so I don't know I did at one point they used to have all these substantive areas specialists that advised and consulted with a little school districts on various subjects like music like specific areas history whatever is that typical for all subjects now I don't know whether I assume that there are classes now that are related to technology in secretary education and I assume there's some consultant like that somewhere in the education department you couldn't find such a person obviously not and this guy is the guy who's advocating for AI and stuff and that's why it was just a chance meeting but I guess my question is runway aside how much work how would I do that what would I come up with is a recommend I'm not saying what the recommendation should be but how bold should we be given that we don't have money to spend etc what would be a realistic in terms of your joint experience of government like we said but if you could get independent buying from a state college or EVM or something like that but if you're going to direct AOE or the agency of education to implement a pipeline they're probably I mean I talk about ACCD but they're probably one of the most strapped agencies in the state government I don't want to make this all about money because I think this is a bigger conversation a more important conversation than that but I also want to be realistic in terms of so if I were to I mean I don't know how to if I could find a body let's say I volunteered Donna since she's not here but Donna's boss the dean would be totally like maybe helpful in doing this and if we said you know UVM out of the goodness of their heart is going to do this again it's resource but they tend to this kind of outreach is good for them it's good recruiting so I have to line out the people to do it and then go to AOE here I've got some I would only propose it as a pilot not a mandate you know like let's try this and if I would have to line up the people right I wouldn't I couldn't just recommend somebody else do it I think you could it wouldn't have to be a legislative director for them to be forced to do it and I think what I heard you say is and you know I'd rather care than stick right well yes and you have to find somebody who has a carrot that willing to give you okay it's not a multi-year thing it's like let's try this yeah I would go back to seeing if you can penetrate the Department of Education does anyone know I don't know who would you know who would you know is French still the Secretary he has not been a new I think the Deputy Secretary they also have a legislative assistant or liaison as well and they have a CTE director so to think of like somebody so whoever is the person who assists local school districts and curriculum development kind of activities in this subject field that you're interested in would be somebody on the ground who would understand the carrot and sticks situation with respect to that kind of thing in that subject area now you have to find that person I'm telling you a person I think probably exists I don't know I mean I know how strapped a soul I've created in phase we gave $17,000 a year to Vermont teachers to help them buy science equipment but there's zero there's will at zero energy and DOE from what we can tell they're so strapped as you said so what we really want is permission to go try something rather than force them to do something they couldn't afford to do of course the school districts you might go see if you have a is there a school district I mean this was the Milo appointment is there a school district that has decided to put a particular emphasis on technology related to this and I don't know that it's AI exactly but it's a technological point of computers at this point that hasn't been interested in trying to do something in that area now do we know how did Milo get it was interesting how did Milo get selected I was so distraught I was he probably already so it wasn't it's very high gel to make out what you're saying so can you do it again I would like to be recognized and give a moment for me to speak yes I understand that exactly yes go it should also be re-training the workforce and also educating people who have pre-existing low paying jobs to have better jobs thank you and that is what happened here is that there were these three remaining subjects and one of them was that because I put it on earlier and when I said what they were one of them was education and John immediately picked up on it because he and Don were interested and he's been looking at it but we absolutely have to have a discussion on the labor and workforce side of it and so what I recommend to Brian is that as we get down in our time availability that at this next meeting at Tech Jam before we're not at Tech Jam Brian's going to find us a location so we're a little independent but can be nearby that we have to cover that subject as well as the economic opportunity subject I'm hoping that by that time on the education subject John will have gotten further and he was burrowing into the the bureaucracy and we'll find exactly where he needs to talk to and have a more concrete proposal I agree with you Joe yes I think possibly instead of hitting the Department of Education it might be more pertinent to have a task which would be maybe addressing by different department guidelines for AI software developers that could eventually become a certification or whatever down the road but so that that might be more labor maybe a labor type I don't know the government but maybe like a labor industry to the extent it would probably be in common the problem is exactly what we heard earlier which is the Department of Labor and the State the Statewide Workforce Development Board they are actually the body that's responsible for like training, certification industry recognized credentials that type of thing so if you're thinking of something like the credentialing or workforce I would say that actually the Department of Labor on fact is the State designated so it's labor and on comes for workforce Joanna you're willing to keep picking this up I am definitely we're now 25 minutes over so I 25 minutes over so I can't so yes I'll do that Jill are you driving the labor one I think are you going to drive I just offered to work with Donna to drive the here's what we're going to do with education are you driving here's what we're going to do positively with labor well I do I don't know we still fit in the many of ethics no I don't think you do I think I have to to call the group together okay I have only a limited amount so what you should do please Jill I'm asking you to do this is send out an email to all members of the task force you are forming a special subcommittee on labor and you want people you should of course CC to Ryan so he knows your recruitment effort and you want some help in formulating specific recommendations with respect to that subject so that task force overall can stack them up out in October and once you get a group then again with Ryan's help you should go forward and have a meeting and try to develop some specific recommendations so that we could and if you do to the extent I will certainly tell Brian if he's going to be available or if it's me I will certainly give you time to present at the October meeting okay okay great alright can we end on that for the moment and we have much to do much much much to do yes yeah some modules Jane's motion is there a second second second just names all is in favor I am going to pose thank you all for coming in participating hopefully I will share my valuable book acting chair next time Disney