{"id":60538,"date":"2023-12-06T16:56:38","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T21:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/?p=60538"},"modified":"2023-12-06T17:08:33","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T22:08:33","slug":"virginia-chief-data-officer-ai-ken-pfeil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/virginia-chief-data-officer-ai-ken-pfeil\/","title":{"rendered":"Low-quality data makes AI stupid, says Virginia\u2019s data chief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

States interested in using the latest artificial intelligence technologies to support their operations will need clean, reliable datasets, Ken Pfeil, Virginia\u2019s chief data officer, said during an event Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking at the final session of a Washington D.C. event hosted by the software company Informatica, Pfeil shared some of his office\u2019s newest data projects, such as a new predictive analytics program for cybersecurity and efforts to support public mental health issues and the commonwealth\u2019s real estate concerns. He also urged other state government leaders to keep their data tidy if they have any designs on using the latest AI software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou’ve got to have all the blocking and tackling done to facilitate quality of data,\u201d Pfeil said. \u201cBecause AI scares me with bad quality data. It’s the whole adage of garbage in, garbage out. Well, you take an intelligent model and you put dumb data into it, you’re just gonna continually make that thing stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pfeil said his own agency, the Office of Data Governance and Analytics, is working with the statewide IT department, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, to improve the state\u2019s use of data to predict cybersecurity threats. He said they\u2019re using an \u201cisolation forest\u201d machine-learning algorithm via software from the company Vertica. He advised the government officials in the conference audience, though, against trusting every promise made by technology companies that claim their products can do everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou’ve got to live within your own business practices, you’ve got to understand what your data is, you’ve got to understand how that’s being treated by your folks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond AI, Pfeil said the state\u2019s annual data competitions<\/a> have been useful to produce new ideas for some of Virginia\u2019s longstanding problems. He said \u201cfour or five really good suggestions\u201d from last year\u2019s competitors \u2014 who were tasked with solving public health issues \u2014 wound up on the desk of John Littel, Virginia\u2019s secretary of health and human services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pfeil said the state is currently trying to use predictive analytics to solve problems related to mental decline, mental health, public safety and economic development. He said the state is also looking to use data to identify underused real estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there are a wide variety of ways to use data and AI, Pfeil pointed out that there\u2019s no single solution that will make those technologies effective in every state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’ve spoken with I don’t know how many different state CDOs, and no one has a cookie cutter solution to any of this,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s kind of learning as you go, but try not to make egregious mistakes as you get there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ken Pfeil, Virginia\u2019s chief data officer, said he’s afraid of what may happen if governments train their AI models on sloppy data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":60539,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_grayscale_images":true,"grayscale_contrast":0,"sponsored_content":false,"display_author_bio":true,"story_type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4677,24394],"tags":[74,233,528,920,5272,14818,23382],"people":[],"special-report":[],"authors":[4696],"class_list":["post-60538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state","category-ai","tag-virginia","tag-data","tag-predictive-analytics","tag-chief-data-officer","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-ai","tag-ken-pfeil","author-colin-wood"],"yoast_head":"\nLow-quality 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