Snohomish County looks to its residents for AI policy
Snohomish County Tribune — Local leaders in Snohomish County are experimenting with direct democracy in order to figure out how the county government should use artificial intelligence, or if it should at all.
For three weekends this spring, a “civic assembly” of 29 randomly selected county residents met to study and debate the thorny ethical issues at the heart of AI. Then, they wrote policy proposals.
The group ended up with a set of 35 recommendations spanning themes like transparency, accountability, privacy, environmental impacts and human oversight. Snohomish County councilmembers say they plan to take the group’s recommendations seriously and will consider adopting them into law.