The city of San Jose is looking to expand two training programs for city staff to use artificial intelligence in their jobs, with the goal of making city services more efficient and cost effective.
About 80 staffers in various departments have already completed one of the city’s recently created 10-week training courses, which train staff how to use artificial intelligence GPTs — which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformers — to enhance the performance of their duties.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in his newsletter Sunday that the city would expand the programs to have at least 1,000 staffers be trained in one of the two offerings by the end of 2026.
One of the courses, called the AI Upskilling Program, is meant for general staff, and trains how to use and customize GPTs. The other is focused on staff who use data in their roles and is called the Data Upskilling Program. Both are run by the city’s Technology Department.
Mahan said the training programs had already yielded successes, like the award of a grant for electric vehicle chargers and a more efficient categorization of miscellaneous text in the city’s 311 reporting system. Mahan said the latter move alone, which was accomplished by a Technology Department staffer using a custom GPT, had saved 500 hours of staff time.
An additional 30 employees are scheduled to go through the courses this fall. Training 1,000 employees to use the tools would represent about 15% of the city’s workforce, according to Mahan.