{"id":258061,"date":"2026-08-03T03:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T03:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/258061\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T03:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T03:00:07","slug":"sas-to-launch-chief-ai-officer-initiative-collaborate-with-local-governments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/258061\/","title":{"rendered":"SAS to launch Chief AI Officer Initiative, collaborate with local governments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Penn\u2019s School of Arts and Sciences unveiled a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Initiative last month, which is set to launch this fall.<\/p>\n

Political Science professor and member of the SAS AI Advisory Group John Lapinski will lead<\/a> the project. According to the press release, the program is the \u201cnewest facet\u201d of the school\u2019s new framework, \u201cSAS Horizons: Pathways for a Changing World,\u201d which was announced<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n

The program emerged as the \u201creach of artificial intelligence expands into new fields in ways previously unimaginable.\u201d Lapinski wrote that \u201cthere\u2019s a seismic shift going on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCities and states are hiring AI leaders to figure out how to integrate the data world into the public sphere,\u201d he wrote in the release. \u201cMost are essentially starting from scratch, trying to figure out as they go how to use AI responsibly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chief AI Officer role is one that\u2019s emerging at city and state governments, the release read. Penn\u2019s program is meant to \u201cfill the current networking vacuum for state and local Chief AI Officers,\u201d as well as \u201ccreate experiential learning opportunities for Penn students.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cDown the line, the plan is to broaden the work to help cities and states navigate AI use, and to foster expanded curricular opportunities for students in the College\u2019s data science\u2013related minors,\u201d the release read.<\/p>\n

Penn\u2019s program is part of the AI & Data Across SAS initiative, one of four strategic themes<\/a> launched alongside the school\u2019s framework.<\/p>\n

To begin, the release detailed, Lapinski will build a team of Penn faculty to launch the initiative and its first annual meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is to figure out how a Chief AI Officer in one place is dealing with a problem, so they can share that knowledge with others,\u201d he wrote in the release.<\/p>\n

He added that the team will collaborate with AI leaders in nearby governments, such as Philadelphia and Washington D.C. and including San Francisco and Seattle. These connections, the release read, will help \u201cunderstand how the vast trove of faculty expertise\u201d at SAS can \u201cact as a concrete resource,\u201d and \u201cseek avenues for student involvement within those institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll try to understand the projects the Chief AI Officers are working on and the ways they\u2019re incorporating AI into how they run and manage programs,\u201d Lapinski wrote. \u201cThen the questions become, how would they want to work with us? Would they want our help?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Trodden, SAS dean, wrote in the release that the Chief AI Officer Initiative will \u201cfoster collaboration with AI leaders at many levels of government and drive important conversations in this space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lapinski also serves as the faculty director of the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program and Fels Institute of Government, as well as the director of the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies. In the release, he wrote that he had been \u201cthinking about AI, machine learning, and large language models for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn\u2019s School of Arts and Sciences unveiled a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Initiative last month, which is set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-258061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}