Season 2 - Episode 26: Skynet

We’re not saying it’s Skynet…

…but we are saying AI making calls on local budgets should raise some eyebrows. 🤖

Episode 26 breaks down:
 ➡️ A $1M+/year AI tool to analyze local spending
 ➡️ The risk of decisions being reduced to numbers
 ➡️ And what happens when context gets left out

Also:
 👏 A real bipartisan win on child care assistance

So yes—progress and questions… in the same episode.

🎥 Watch “Skynet”
 👉 Decide for yourself.

Because not everything that counts… can be counted.

#DecidingIowa #IowaPolitics #AI #Leadership

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, Bramer County and all of Iowa. Welcome back to Deciding Iowa. I'm Dr. Shauna LeBrick. I'm a cancer scientist, biochem prof, and House District 57 candidate.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

And I'm Dr. Emily Bavers. I'm a physician, mama of three, and a health advocate. So we want to first give a shout-out to the legislature for making permanent Iowa's child care assistance program.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

You know, this program will make Iowa child care workers eligible for the state's child care assistance program, regardless of their income, helping folks who take care of our children make sense.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Absolutely. It's always good whenever a bipartisan bill that addresses a real need makes it to the governor's desk.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Well, on that front, uh you know, the House Republicans are considering spending $1.4 million upfront and close to a million dollars a year after that for three years to employ a publicly accessible AI tool that can analyze spending activity of Iowa counties and over half of the public school districts.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah. First and foremost, is the Iowa House even qualified to give fiduciary advice?

SPEAKER_00 1:09

I don't think so at this point.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

The idea that this AI tool would give not just an overview of the spending activity, but also try to prioritize independent community uh decisions, which is to say highlight areas where in its mind inefficiencies exist. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Yeah, these might include redundant services, or those services flagged for costing relatively too much money.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah. On the surface, I get it. We should use every tool available to us to help streamline budgets and wisely use resources. But this approach sounds potentially dangerous in its application since it would likely underestimate the impact of qualitative information.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

It would.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

There's usually more to a decision than just numbers, and I worry how this tool could be used to control rather than guide local spending. Finally, spending greater than a million dollars annually in the environment of a deficit seems like throwing more bad checks at the problem.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah, you know, in this matrix and how the AI would evaluate, it's not in the room with the decision makers. I get the desire and the need to identify inefficiencies, I really do. But if the state wants to add more scrutiny to local spending, how about they start by letting our state auditor do their job and track how hundreds of millions of dollars of public money is being spent every year through the voucher program?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Great question, Sean. I wonder what their answer to that would be.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

I don't know. Be well, I won't.