GREEN BAY (WLUK) — Artificial intelligence, better known as AI, is everywhere.
“Building machines that are capable of doing jobs that previously only humans could do. In particular, things like predictive abilities, decision making, generation,” said UW-Green Bay Associate Teaching Professor Paul Belanger.
The technology is becoming more widely available — and Wisconsin lawmakers are looking at how it can be a helpful tool, more specifically for the state’s workforce.
UW Health is already utilizing AI to help providers create draft responses to online messages sent by their patients.
The system believes this helps with writer’s block and takes more of a cognitive load off the health care provider.
“When the draft comes through, there’s only two things that the provider can do with it,” said Frank Liao, senior director of digital health and emerging technologies at UW Health. “The provider can click a button and start to edit the draft, or click a second button to just discard the draft completely. So there is no auto-send feature on this draft at all.”
A legislative study committee is examining the use of Artificial Intelligence — which could result in the creation of bills which could be taken up in the upcoming legislative session.
The committee’s second meeting was held in Green Bay, where they heard from experts in healthcare on what AI has to offer.
State Senator Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, heads that committee.
“It’s so important that we have an opportunity to see how we can positively help people, and then also talk about some of the safeguards, right? People are concerned about data and data privacy and consumer protection,” said Bradley.
AI hasn’t come without its deficiencies.
Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, made a change to its AI chatbot after five states sent a letter claiming it was spreading misinformation about state ballot deadlines.
Now, before listing election-related responses, the chatbot directs users asking election-related questions to Vote.gov.
Inaccuracies is something Belanger recognizes as a risk.
“You are better off supplying it with the facts, the figures, the stats, whatever it is of the project you’re working on, the letter that you need, and then having it generate something based on that than doing it whole cloth. Because it will indeed, make those things up,” said Belanger.
Belanger explains AI can be an extremely useful tool — and points out the human element won’t be going anywhere.
“As soon as we can sort of approach it from that position where the human remains first and foremost, the arbiter of value, the director of the functionality of the machine, then we’re going to be able to start to see some, maybe more realistic type applications,” said Belanger.
