“Suddenly the definition of what people meant when they were talking about AI changed underneath us,” Raiche said. “We went from talking about AI as statistical models for computer vision and image recognition, which … when we started our code of ethics and all that work, that was the world we were living in. Then suddenly we were in a world of generative AI.”
Since then, Raiche and Vermont have established themselves as national trailblazers on AI. That code of ethics — which compares AI to power tools, instruments to be used by skilled operators to more effectively carry out tasks — has been adopted by many state and local governments across the country. Raiche has presented to other states setting up AI councils about his own state’s group, on which he sits.
Raiche’s current title is chief data and AI officer, a role that recognizes the vital role data plays in enabling the state to work with AI. Often, that boils down to standardizing and streamlining procedures.
“The prerequisite to actually doing the shiny AI work is to go through and update processes and to develop some consistency,” Raiche said. “It’s really business process engineering work that happens first, which will result in improved data quality, which unlocks the ability to leverage AI.”
It’s that collaborative nature, with peers both in and outside the state, that Raiche said brings a positivity to his work.
“We have folks who lean in to, ‘What could this look like?’ and who take the opportunity to learn,” he said. “And those people really encourage me when they trust that their leadership has their best interests and the best interests of Vermonters in mind, and then they lean in and learn something new and take a risk and come out better for it on the other side.”
