The California Department of Human Resources unveiled a series of professional development courses for public employees this month following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s September executive order that instructed state agencies to brainstorm and develop a plan for how to “ethically and responsibly” deploy AI technology in government operations.
When California began exploring using AI, the state spoke with academics, labor groups, industry partners and community organizations to determine common concerns, Secretary of Government Operations Amy Tong said.
“Every single one of those sectors wanted to make sure that we educated the workforce about this emergent technology and to help share the potential pitfall and benefit that comes with it,” Tong said.
The GenAI training was designed for three groups of state employees: general workforce, business leaders, and technical and cybersecurity experts. GenAI tools, such as Chat GPT, have emerged as a more sophisticated version of the technology that is able to produce new content, instead of simply performing a specific task.
CalHR partnered with the education nonprofit InnovateUS, at no cost to the state, to develop the training for the general workforce, supervisors and executive-level employees. More technical training for IT employees will be provided by multiple vendors, CalHR said.
The goals of the training are to “identify and mitigate potential output inaccuracies, fabricated text, hallucinations, and biases of GenAI, while upholding public privacy protections and applicable state laws and policies,” a report released Wednesday said.
Additionally, the training aims to inform state workers of the potential privacy, security and legal considerations of AI; teach employees new skill sets involving the technology; and mitigate potential inaccuracies and biases, CalHR said. State leaders likened some aspects of the professional development to cybersecurity training that government workers undergo.
To develop the technical training the Office of Data and Innovation conducted a two-month research project to determine what skills were necessary for highly desirable AI-related jobs in the private sector. The goal of the research project was to determine what skills should be included in the AI training for state employees from entry level to senior roles.
“We can say, ‘Oh training, training, training!’ but what are you training for?” Tong said. She said the research was an intentional effort to determine the skills needed to fulfill the demands of a workforce in an AI economy.
Asked if she was concerned if newly skilled state workers would leave government jobs for higher paying private sector roles, Tong said, “By really investing in our state employees, by giving them this opportunity to learn, it feels like we’re doing our job to take care of our employees.”
The majority of the five training courses composing the “Foundations of GenAI” are available through CalHR’s professional development platform CalLearns. The state department said the training would be continuously updated to incorporate workers’ feedback. Tong characterized the current training as, “Version 1.”
CalHR said the department sought feedback from employees, academics and internal AI-related work groups prior to the training’s release.
“We want our workforce to be prepared to lead into the future. The new training materials will provide information and development opportunities to employees to best serve Californians,” said CalHR Director Eraina Ortega in a Wednesday statement.
The broader push to incorporate AI into the state’s operations has its skeptics.
Brian Justie, a senior research analyst at the University of California, Los Angeles, Labor Center, said Newsom’s “top down” AI directive is bringing untested technology into the public sector. He added there wasn’t a clear benefit in doing so and he pointed to the lack of evidence that proves AI will increase productivity of governmental operations.
“Training public sector employees on AI will probably lead to something, but I don’t think it will lead to better outcomes for workers or the working class, or probably not even for just your average California resident,” Justie said.
Justie warned the inclusion of AI could lead to more tedious work for employees and demand higher productivity. A recent survey of 2,500 global employees conducted by the Upwork Research Institute found that 77% of respondents said AI added to their workload.
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