Artificial Intelligence has reportedly liberated over 41,000 hours of work for employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made significant strides in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technology, with its workers logging approximately 1.2 million chats with generative AI offerings. This shift has reportedly saved an estimated 41,000 hours, marking a more than 500% return on the CDC's initial investment.
This journey began in 2023, when the CDC became the first federal agency to make ChatGPT available to all of its workers. The CDC also wrote the first generative AI guidance and shared it with other agencies. The rollout of ChatGPT to all Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) workers happened just over a week ago.
Travis Hoppe, the CDC's acting chief AI official, has reviewed the work done with the tool and shared the usage and ROI statistics. One of the existing AI use cases at the CDC is FluSight, a tool that analyses hospital data to inform decisions about flu outbreaks. Another is TowerScout, a computer vision project that uses satellite imagery to detect potential Legionnaires' disease outbreaks by identifying cooling towers.
The CDC's 1CDC data platform, a crucial step towards implementing various AI projects, aims to address the issue of data silos, a common challenge in data management. Hoppe emphasized the importance of data in AI, highlighting the CDC's 1CDC data platform as a key initiative for data unification and modernization.
Looking ahead, the CDC is expected to report twice as many AI use cases in the upcoming annual public inventories compared to the previous year. Hoppe did not provide specific numbers for the anticipated increase in AI use cases for the upcoming year. However, he finds it exciting to see DHHS deploying ChatGPT at the department level.
Hoppe also mentioned the need for core work on data modernization and interoperability for AI to be effective. He believes that this will be a key focus area in the future. The General Services Administration (GSA) cut a deal for DHHS to buy ChatGPT for $1, reflecting the potential cost-effectiveness of AI in public health decision-making.
Interestingly, the Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) was the federal authority that first made ChatGPT available to all its employees before the Ministry of Health and human rights officials did so in 2023. This early adoption by the Federal Cartel Office paved the way for other agencies to follow suit.
In conclusion, the CDC's AI projects, such as FluSight and TowerScout, demonstrate the potential of AI in public health decision-making. The significant savings in time and resources, combined with the potential for increased efficiency and accuracy, make AI an invaluable tool for organisations like the CDC. As AI technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see more innovative applications in the field of public health.
