‘A tool to help’: Sheffield City leaders approve usage of artificial intelligence to help with city projects

SHEFFIELD, Ala. (WAFF) - A Shoals city is making a giant leap investing in Artificial Intelligence.

“It’s a technology that is not going away,” Mayor Bryan Van Devender explained.

Sheffield Mayor Bryan Van Devender says the city now employs the SuperGrok platform to help organize city occurrences. City Council members voted unanimously to buy the program’s highest capacity for $3,000.

For example, he says that with all of the upcoming projects they have going, AI will help with organizing what paperwork needs to be filled out, where employees need to be to get that project on track and more. The city has five grant funded projects happening at the same time, on top of everything else.

“It’s used as a tool to help me keep track what we’re doing,” Van Devender said. “What we’re up to. It helps coordinate and keep up with the myriad of moving parts that with the forms and the stakeholders and different firms and agencies.”

It’s not a tool to replace any humans who work in the building. Van Devender wants to be very clear with the community about that. He says it did not fill a position meant for a human or get anyone hired.

He even added that there hasn’t been a true administrative assistant in years with the previous administration either.

“The engineers and contractors are still moving dirt and building things,” Van Devender. ‘Humans are still answering the phones at City hall. The city council still manages the resolutions and the money. It’s not that, we’re not using AI to replace anything here at city hall.”

Van Devender says this program is doing a job that wasn’t ever slotted for a human to take.

He added that any employee with the city can access and utilize the program for city purposes. The program is very new, so he will roll it out soon but he will not expect employees to use it if they do not want to.

And, Van Devender says that it’s programmed to not send, post or anything else until a human has looked it over and then the human has to send it.

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