After months of planning, building and collaboration, the lab officially welcomed visitors on Wednesday to the seventh floor of the GTA headquarters. It will serve as a dedicated space — both physical and virtual — where state agencies, cities, counties, and even school systems can test AI use cases in a hands-on, low-risk environment.
“I had the initial idea about a year and a half ago because AI had jumped on the scene so quickly, and because it was here and there was no stopping that train, we had to do something,” said Shawnzia Thomas, CIO and executive director of the GTA.
Thomas likened the lab’s purpose to being in the kitchen and trying out new recipes, emphasizing that, just like baking a cake, one needs to test, tweak and perfect things in a controlled setting before serving them to the public. That recipe metaphor is central to the lab’s mission: bringing technologists, agency leaders and vendor partners together to experiment with new ideas before pushing them out to the public.
It’s a direct response to what Thomas sees as apprehension around AI use — one she believes can be countered through collaboration and transparency.
“Everyone’s afraid of it,” she said. “And to release that fear of it, you have to put your hands on it.”
The lab includes three sandbox environments powered by Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google Cloud, which are already loaded with sample data from 19 vetted technology partners. They are also designed for both training and development, Thomas said.
Curiosity about the lab is spreading well beyond state agencies, too, with cities, universities, the Atlanta airport and public transit officials all looking to explore what the space can offer. Thomas said that due to the high demand before the official opening, they’ve already had to expand.
“We’ve repurposed the space originally allocated for our security operations center, which will be relocated to another floor, allowing the AI lab to occupy the entire seventh floor,” she said.
Chief Digital and AI Officer Nikhil Deshpande explained that the surge in interest reflects not just operational growth but a strategy to position innovation as a driver of public value.
“The Georgia Innovation Lab is not just a space to test new technologies, it’s where we explore their real-world impact, center human needs and build trust through transparency,” he said.
Thomas added that the positive momentum and interest in the new lab are driven by top-level support for innovation in government.
“With Gov. Brian Kemp’s leadership in inaugurating the Georgia Innovation Lab, we’ve taken a bold step toward shaping the future of public service,” she said. “This lab is our proving ground, where imagination meets implementation.”
That commitment to turning ideas into action is reflected in one of the lab’s objectives: supporting proof-of-concept work. If a technology solution shows promise, its journey doesn’t stop there.
“Once we see that concept, proof that this use case works, then the partner and the agency can go out and do their contracting and put that in production,” Thomas said.
But before any solution reaches that stage, the lab requires a critical first step: ethics training. Participants are grounded in the responsible use of AI, which is beneficial as agencies explore how to apply advanced tools to sensitive data and real-world challenges.
As Thomas put it, “you’ve got to bring on the awareness of what not to put in AI.” The lab operates under the guidance of the Georgia AI Advisory Council and follows an “ethical playbook” to make sure legal and societal impacts are fully considered.
Now that the lab is open, a growing list of projects to test is already in the pipeline — from a statewide single sign-on platform called My Georgia to AI-driven defenses against distributed denial-of-service attacks. But Thomas is clear-eyed about the lab’s purpose: not every idea will succeed, and that’s the point.
“This lab is for experimentation. Sometimes it may work, sometimes it may not,” she said. “This is a space where we encourage experimentation and learning from failures.”
The lab is also helping lay the groundwork for other AI-related “quick wins.” Thomas explained that these quick wins may be small in scope, but over time, they can drive meaningful change for both government agencies and the citizens they serve.
“Take chatbots, for example, that have been out there a while. Those have led to larger-scale projects like our AI call center platform with the Department of Human Services that is now in the works,” Thomas said.
That platform will eventually use AI to help train customer service representatives by analyzing past call data and identifying areas for improvement, without requiring human staff to manually review every interaction.
“Traditionally, people have had to spend hours listening to calls, which takes up valuable resources," Thomas said. "But the question Georgia is now asking with every task is: ‘Can AI do this?’”
Regardless of all this progress, Thomas said the state will continue adhering to the same guiding philosophy: AI should empower people, not replace them.
“Our approach is grounded in augmentation, not replacement. We want to empower our people to do all the work that we don’t need humans to do,” she said. “We want AI to do that to get our humans back to doing the work that humans need to do.”
