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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCouncil Minutes - 2024-02-12 SSpecial Council Meeting Minutes February 12, 2024, 1:00 p.m. Council Chambers - Hybrid City of Kitchener 200 King Street W, Kitchener, ON N2G 4G7 Present: Mayor B. Vrbanovic Councillor S. Davey Councillor D. Schnider Councillor J. Deneault Councillor C. Michaud Councillor A. Owodunni Councillor P. Singh Councillor B. loannidis Councillor M. Johnston Councillor D. Chapman Councillor S. Stretch Staff: D. Chapman, Chief Administrative Officer M. May, General Manager, Community Services and Deputy Chief Administrator V. Raab, General Manager, Corporate Services J. Readman, General Manager, Development Services J. Lautenbach, Chief Financial Officer, Financial Services A. Fusco, Director Legislated Services / City Clerk D. Saunderson, Deputy Clerk 1. PART ONE - 1:00 p.m. Part One of the Special Council meeting commenced at Communitech at The Tannery Building - 151 Charles St W Suite 100, Kitchener, ON N2G 1 H6, to consider the Strategic Session Reports on the agenda this date, chaired by the Mayor. 1 2. Commencement A meeting of City Council was held at 1 p.m. this date, chaired by Mayor B. Vrbanovic. Notice of this meeting had been previously given to all members of Council by the City Clerk pursuant to Chapter 25 (Council Procedure) of the Municipal Code. The meeting began with a Land Acknowledgement given by the Mayor. 3. Disclosure of Pecuniary Interest and the General Nature Thereof None. 4. Strategic Session Reports 4.1 Digital Kitchener Innovation Lab exploration of Artificial Intelligence, COR - 2024 -068 Councillor A. Owodunni joined the meeting at this time. Dan Murray, Director of Technology Innovation and Services, introduced the strategic session to discuss Artificial Intelligence (AI), as an emerging technology and topic of interest noting that no decisions would be made by Council. D. Murray noted that the Digital Kitchener Lab has been investigating how Al could be used at the City and introduced Courtney Zinn, former Director of the Digital Lab now Manager of Enterprise Resource Planning. C. Zinn introduced Kevin Tuer, Chief Technology Officer with Communitech, who addressed the national network of Canada's technology network and highlighted the investments made by the City of Kitchener that have furthered growth in the field. The growth of start-ups and scale -ups as it relates to Al and projects to operationalize good Al, with ethics and sense of responsibility in mind were highlighted by K. Tuer. C. Zinn introduced Professor Jimmy Lin, with the University of Waterloo and Co - Director of Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of Waterloo, who provided a presentation on Generative Al. J. Lin noted his experience with supervised machine learning, and generative Al being two tracks of technologies, one to generate images and the other being large language models including but not limited to ChatGPT, OpenAl, etc. J. Lin explained the function of ChatGPT as a computer program, or black box, that takes input or prompts and generates an outputs based on those prompts and provided examples of ChatGPT prompts including exam questions, assignments and generates approximately an 80% output. Creation and development of prompts was highlighted. The purpose of autoregressive E language modeling (ARLM) or guessing the next word, in ChatGPT was noted. The role of reinforcement learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) in ChatGPT contributes to adding the human element of feedback to assess whether it's an innocuous or toxic response. Members of Council asked questions regarding the similarities between Al and Boolean searches and received a response from the Presenter. J. Lin highlighted challenges associated with ChatGPT including hallucinations while stressing the need to foster creative brainstorming. The impact of data scarcity was noted. The expense of computing and need for Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to process the data and the proprietary nature of GPU was highlighted. Members of Council asked questions regarding the proprietary nature of GPUs, and monopoly on the units and received a response from the Presenter. J. Lin reported that the alignment of machine language learning to be helpful, harmless, and free from bias is difficult as it can be biased by processes. Members of Council asked questions regarding the benefits of information collection with how such information is then used by Al, and received a response from the Presenter highlighting the need for accountability and transparency of decision-making and fairness of the models. Dangers associated with Al were highlighted by J. Lin including a loss of control due to some prevailing thoughts that Al is going to lead to an existential threat, and the concept that Al will create disruption and job loss as roles are replaced with automation. Councillor P. Singh left the meeting at this time. J. Lin reported the dangers of disinformation and "deep fakes" and how malicious actors can impact global markets and ruin relationships, and careers given the realism that is possible to achieve when combined with microtargeting. Councilor P. Singh returned to the meeting at this time. Members of Council asked questions regarding why agencies are pursuing Al if there is not ethics training in computer science, such harm can occur by malicious actors, dangers of taking out the critical thinking from social science engineering, augmentation of the Al tools available, philosophical discussions regarding the ability to achieve alignment and received responses from the Presenter regarding responsible Al. 3 Opportunities with general purpose technologies (GPT) like Al were highlighted, including leveraging Al for the use of digitizing patient charting, if used responsibility with privacy guardrails installed, personalized education such as tutoring and information access through large language models (LLMs). In summary J. Lin noted that increased innovation will lead to increased productivity which will lead to prosperity and expressed the impact that the "wait and see" approach will have on the emerging competitiveness in the global markets. Members of Council asked questions regarding how the City of Kitchener can partner with technology vendors to leverage data and improve service, implications in upskilling in a unionized environment, sectors that are or can use LLM, and received responses from the Presenter on the next stages in the discussion and Mayor B. Vrbanovic expressed the previous work the City engaged in with the Harvard Bloomberg. C. Zinn presented on the exploration of Al at the Digital Kitchener Innovation Lab and work undertaken in 2023. The purposes of the Digital Kitchener Innovation Lab were highlighted and C. Zinn noted Lab staff have been learning about emerging technology and prototyping situations. Some Al experiments undertaken at the City where highlighted including Conversational Al, to synthesize data contained in the Municipal Code and Zoning By-law information in a dynamic way for customers, and leveraging Open Data to connect citizens with their community through a Local Guide app. C. Zinn highlighted that the Lab's experience with multi-lingual support, to scan and interact with signage in English and translate it to a different language. The potential for the City to create efficiencies with Al were noted and required actions to be undertaken to ensure that responsible Al is generated. Members of Council asked questions regarding staffing resources need to expand the City's use of Al, collaborating with area municipalities to further the Digital Lab Al programs, time required to train Al applications, ways to monetize the systems, achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) and received responses from the Presenter and C. Zinn. 5. Recess and Reconvene The Special Council meeting then recessed at 2:35 p.m. and reconvened at Kitchener City Hall, 200 King Street West, Council Chambers, for Part Two of the Special Council agenda at 3:00 p.m., with all members present chaired by Mayor B. Vrbanovic, except Councillor D. Schnider. 6. PART TWO - 3:00 p.m. M "l_ Mayoral Business and Updates - Mayor B. Vrbanovic None. 8. In -camera Meeting Authorization Moved by Councillor M. Johnston Seconded by Councillor P. Singh "That an in -camera meeting of City Council be held immediately following the special council meeting this date to consider a personal matter about an Identifiable individual, including municipal employees receive education and training as authorized by Section 239 (2) (b) and (3.1) of the Municipal Act, 2001, respectively." Carried 9. Recess and Reconvene The Special Council meeting then recessed at 3:01 p.m. and reconvened at 6:05 p.m., with all members present chaired by Mayor B. Vrbanovic. 10. PART THREE - 6:00 p.m. 10.1 Groh Public School -Project with Activa -Harvest Park Land Planning Project Grade 7 Students from Groh Public School made a presentation to Kitchener City Council on a development proposal they completed, with the support of Activa, and other industry professionals related to the development of Activa's Harvest Park lands in the South of Kitchener and responded to questions from Council. 11. Adjournment On motion the meeting adjourned at 6:49 p.m. 61,