Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County Council for Economic Opportunity, Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Date: Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Place: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 1h 32m (video)
Official meeting video (Fairfax County): https://video.fairfaxcounty.gov/player/clip/3823
Official Board of Supervisors page (Fairfax County): https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/boardofsupervisors/

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-29. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:02] Thank you, everybody. I'm glad you could take a seat. We're going to go ahead and get started. We made a little bit, we created the first test of the morning is you'd find your seat.

[00:00:22] So hopefully everybody can find their card and have a seat. I think for the board members, we made it particularly hard. We wanted to make sure they actually had fully awakened. Mr. Hill, I'm sorry we gave you your same seat. You okay, goods? Well, we thank everybody for being here this morning.

[00:00:43] We are, it is a pleasure to host another meeting. We've got a packed agenda, so I'm going to keep my comments hopefully very short to get us started. We have, first and foremost, I just want to mention that the chairman, McKay, will not be here for a bit.

[00:01:01] He is with the Northern Virginia Chamber. They have their annual meeting today, I believe it is. And so they are meeting and discussing, and he is presenting some of what we're all doing. So he will be joining us probably in the course of our discussion, but I wanted to make sure that we recognize his work and contributions.

[00:01:22] I'm going to take a brief moment, and I do ask that it be brief, just to go around the room, because I know we've met a few times, but I know we're still pretty new to each other, except for maybe the board members who kind of know each other. But if you just, particularly the individuals from industry, if you just take a moment and identify your name and just what you do in some general sense.

[00:01:44] Board members, kind of we'll just say who we are and then we'll move on from that. So, again, I'm Dan Stork. I'm the chair of the Opportunity Committee, and we are moving along with trying to get this organized and get you all to join us.

[00:02:00] I represent the Mountain Vernon District on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. I'm going to go to my left. Hi, Rebecca Mowdry. I'm the director of the Fairfax County Department of Economic Initiatives. We support local economic development. And really quick, on the microphone, just tap it.

[00:02:16] It'll turn green. That means it's on. And then tap it again to turn it off. Hi, I'm Cheryl Minaj. I'm the president at Tanex. We're at GovCon, IT services, modernization, cyber, AI, all the things. We're based out of Herndon, so that's our main office.

[00:02:34] All right, good morning, everyone. I'm Andre Marshall, vice president for research, innovation, and economic impact at George Mason University. Good morning, all. Ron Kiesing. I am the chief AI officer at Leidos.

[00:02:49] - Good morning, I'm a general partner at Proof. My name is Jenny Shutter, I forgot that part. We're an expansion stage journalist venture capital fund. - Good morning, I'm Rodney Lusk. I'm the Franconia district supervisor. - Good morning, I'm Matt Cull.

[00:03:05] I'm the chief information and digital officer at Anova Health. I'm relatively new to the area prior to this. I was the global chief information officer for Cleveland Clinic. - Kathy Smith, Sully district supervisor. - Morning everyone, Chad Knights. I'm the Vice President for Information Engineering Technologies and College Computing at Northern Virginia Community College, which is a hell of a mouthful at 9 o'clock.

[00:03:27] I'm here for Dr. Ankeros, thank you. - Good morning, Dalia Palczyk, Providence District Supervisor. - Good morning, Michael Beckett. I'm the Director for the Department of Family Services and we operate the Virginia Career Work Centers.

[00:03:43] - Good morning, Jen Miller, Deputy County Executive for Community Development, about three months in, coming from the Pentagon, the Department of the Air Force and Space Force for the last 15 years. - Good morning, this is Ashwin Barrett, CEO of Gallant, an AI native company.

[00:03:59] I really like this upgraded conference room. I feel like pampered. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Jimmy Bierman, Drainsville District Supervisor. Hi, I'm John Serafini. I'm the CEO of Hawkeye 360, which is a local defense technology company.

[00:04:17] Thank you. Yeah, Pat Herdy, Springfield District Supervisor. Victor Hoskins, CEO, Fairfax County Economic Development. Andres Jimenez, Mason District Supervisor. Anthony Chang, founder of Silverline Equities. We buy office buildings to make them better office buildings and advise around anything in commercial real estate.

[00:04:40] Good morning and welcome, Brian Hill, County Executive. Good morning, I'm Jennifer Taylor, President of the Northern Virginia Technology Council. Morning, I'm Peter Kan, I'm CEO of Enabled Intelligence, an AI services and technology company. Well, thank you, Peter, and thank all of you for joining us this morning.

[00:05:00] We are truly building off, this conversation today builds off the conversation we had on February 11th with the Committee on Economic Opportunity. That discussion, we reviewed the impact of AI on our workforce, how educational institutions are responding, and discussion about how to position Fairfax County as an AI capital.

[00:05:21] The ideas that we generated from the meeting I think were outstanding. The insights we gained, the continued focus by this council on that issue is a way for us to figure out how to guide not only the county, but also kind of our community, our areas around here, and find a way forward to truly adapt and utilize AI effectively.

[00:05:42] So we're gonna continue that focus today. We know that particularly given the impacts across the river that there's some transformation that's occurring in our communities. I don't think any of us know exactly what that is. As a serial entrepreneur myself, you always are kind of, you're trying to understand your environment but you're also trying to figure out how to get through it hopefully healthfully and profitably, but you know that that isn't always evident when you are first looking at that situation that you're confronting.

[00:06:15] But those economic transformations, all the more reason why this committee and why we all are here and why we really need your insight. Because we truly want to be a leader in AI in terms of how it's utilized, how it's effectively embraced, not only by county government, but also by our community overall.

[00:06:33] The goal of the meeting today, and I'm going to emphasize this, is to hear from you if an AI coalition in the county or our region would be helpful to guide us towards that end. You all are the optimum group to do that. You bring incredibly diverse viewpoints about how that could be utilized and how maybe best to approach that. You also have significant expertise and backgrounds in that area and those areas.

[00:07:03] I know that many of you aren't AI experts or techs, and I think that's probably less critical to really to figure out how best to move this forward because AI, if it's not today, it will be everywhere.

[00:07:19] And everywhere means that like the computers that are mostly at our tables, it will be one more tool that we use, given that long line of tools that humans have used hopefully move us forward successfully. So those diverse backgrounds are ones that we're counting on to bring us to that next step.

[00:07:39] And I wanted to emphasize one more thing, and I know my colleagues know this, but we truly are here to hear from all of you. And we have obviously a lot of board members here. We are deeply interested in what you're doing. But for the most part, we're going to be quiet and listen.

[00:07:55] If we have a clarifying question, we're going to ask those. but we truly are looking to spend and focus our time and really our awareness, our knowledge that we gained today from each of you that we've invited here because you all provide a particular element or aspect or something that we don't currently know and have ourselves, and we are counting on you to point us in the right direction or tell us when we can be doing something differently.

[00:08:22] So hard truths are coolly part of the conversation today, and we're looking forward to what you share regarding that. So thank you. With that, I'm going to turn to Rebecca Madre, and Rebecca is going to give us kind of the update on how we're going to be – the morning is going to proceed. Yeah, thank you very much.

[00:08:40] So – and welcome, Supervisor Alcorn. We did introductions, but thank you very much. I'm going to just look back a little bit to kind of set us up for today and provide a little bit more context. So at our last meeting on February 11th, we discussed how can this region become an AI leader, and AI capital, and we've really focused on preparing our workforce.

[00:09:03] So we heard from several speakers. We heard from FCPS and Nova Community College about their training efforts, what they're doing, what they're planning for. It was impressive, it was very inspiring, and led to a great discussion on what else can be done.

[00:09:20] A central theme that really came out of that was a need to capitalize on the significant assets that we already have. And I just want to note that many other regions really aspire to where we are in terms of our business mix and our very skilled talent pool.

[00:09:38] But we know that if we are not moving forward, we are moving backward. And that can't be even more true now in terms of where AI is moving. And so in that light, the ideas that were discussed at the last meeting kind of focused in on a few areas.

[00:09:55] One, support AI development and deployment in our core industry competencies. For example, security, defense, and intelligence, as well as in regulated industries like healthcare or others. Two, focus on niche areas of the future, like small language models, particularly for government services, government solutions, government innovation, and also AI assurance and human AI interaction.

[00:10:24] And finally, to be the leader in proof of concept, really testing an effective application of AI tools, using AI to solve grand challenges and being the place where people know how to use AI.

[00:10:40] A lot of good ideas and discussion came out for actions to implement on those, and those range from an annual summit to monthly public workshops to supporting tech accelerators. But underlying this was the premise that to achieve some of these things, along with training our workforce of tomorrow, we very much must be focused on ensuring very quickly upskilling workers, business owners, and the general public.

[00:11:12] That this is really a requirement to work towards being a leader in all those things, in AI testing, proof of concept, development, and deployment, as well as attracting investment into these areas here in the county and the region.

[00:11:27] So really quick, I just kinda wanna provide a little bit more context on this. So consider that in Fairfax County, just this county, which is the largest county in the region, but we have about 640,000 employees. Most of these people, most of us rely on our employers to provide training and professional development for their jobs and for their careers.

[00:11:51] And while many of you in this room I know are definitely doing the work to bring AI tools, to build AI tools, and train your workers. Is that happening everywhere? And some recent data kind of suggests that companies and workers are having a lot of challenges in this area.

[00:12:09] And I think that anecdotally, none of us would be surprised by that. So Jennifer Taylor actually alerted me to an interesting Axios survey that found that 90% of the C-suite executives that they surveyed said that their firm has an AI strategy, 90%.

[00:12:27] However, only 57% of employees say that their company has one, so a mismatch. Also, a survey by an AI firm called Ryder found that about half of their employees reported that they've been left to figure out Gen AI on their own.

[00:12:45] And a McKinsey report found very similar findings. Reporting by Forbes found that 41% of millennial and Gen Z employees confessed to sabotaging their company's AI strategy by refusing to use AI tools or outputs, which is interesting because those groups are the groups that are most likely to be using AI.

[00:13:12] However, apparently, maybe they're using it outside of work or they are just not using the tools or the processes that their companies would like them to use. A Pew Research survey, which was the most expansive survey out of all of these, identified that about 81% of workers could be considered non-AI users at the workplace.

[00:13:34] And also that workers are more worried than hopeful about AI in the workplace. And in terms of disparities by business type, Some surveys have found that only about 14% of small businesses are using AI.

[00:13:51] So that is really hard to track and in real time and many, many more are experimenting and using it probably in some way. Also adoption greatly varies and will greatly vary by industry sector and business type.

[00:14:06] So really the bottom line from all of this data is that there seems to be an understanding among a portion of business leaders. that ai is a competitive necessity and they're urging workers to get on board but there's a lot of job fear there are broken tools and there's a lack of support that is making adoption very rocky and very difficult and not successful so if we kind of as a county as a region are looking to reach our larger goals of being an ai leader of having a competitive economy with successful

[00:14:45] businesses and productive workers, we must or we can facilitate a labor force and a business community that's fully adopting and training workers on AI. And when we talked with you, a number of you, and did further research, it seems that one entity is not focused on this, is not charged with this at the local level. It is not being guided and widely supported at the local or regional level.

[00:15:16] And that said, there are a lot of tools. There's a lot of information about this, but there's not support for actual implementation and integration. So that's why we're posing the question today, if an AI coalition is warranted, meaning a focus group comprised of leaders that really can help move the needle in this area.

[00:15:39] And we've prepared a challenge statement that we're proposing today, which is to empower every Fairfax County business and their workers to quickly adopt and govern practical and safe AI tools to enhance productivity, creativity, and job efficiency.

[00:15:56] And this leads us to where we're going next. The primary question that we're asking today is, really, is an AI coalition an effective first step to address that challenge, to facilitate integration of AI technologies into our businesses and the labor force?

[00:16:17] And what would this coalition do? Who would lead it? Who would participate on it? Those are the questions that we would like you all to discuss today. And to start the conversation, we have a few speakers who will share their thoughts on what they see as priorities.

[00:16:33] We've kind of already done introductions, but I'll quickly introduce them again. First, we have Dr. Andre Marshall, the Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact at GMU, and President of the George Mason Research Foundation. As a university's senior research officer, Dr. Marshall provides overall leadership for the portfolio of research, innovation, and economic development activities.

[00:16:58] So perfect person to opine on this topic. We also have Cheryl Minaj, the president of AttainX, Inc., a dynamic and rapidly growing company specializing in artificial intelligence, technology, modernization, automation, and cybersecurity.

[00:17:14] And Cheryl has been a wealth of knowledge for us as we've prepared this topic. Thank you, Cheryl. We have Peter Kent, the CEO of Enabled Intelligence, a company that specializes in labeling and annotating high-quality data for AI development in the field of geospatial intelligence.

[00:17:32] And I just want to shout out to Peter and Enabled Intelligence because they have an amazing partner in our Talent Up program to connect previously overlooked talent to great career opportunities. And actually, Enabled Intelligence is receiving an award soon from our partner in that program, SkillSource Group.

[00:17:48] So thank you very much, Peter. And we have Jennifer Taylor, President and CEO of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, one of the largest regional technology councils in the nation with a mission to accelerate technology, innovation, and promote world-class work for development and has been an incredible thought partner in this topic and is doing a lot through NVTC.

[00:18:10] So with that, I'd like to turn it over. Why don't we go ahead and do ladies first? So if we could go Cheryl and then Jennifer, please. Thank you, Rebecca, and thank you all for the opportunity.

[00:18:26] So Tanex, we do have an innovation lab. So that's how we are more, I guess, in the field of AI right now. We're in such a sweet spot with Fairfax County because this is the chance for us to really develop and form Fairfax County to go to the next level.

[00:18:43] We're in a sweet spot where if we don't act now, we'll get behind because everybody's looking at AI. Everybody, all the private companies, government agencies, everyone's looking at policy of AI and education of AI, adoption of AI, so we're in a very cool spot right now to really take us to the next level. Recently, ATTANEX partnered with Texas A&M University in FEMA and we did post-storm assessment damage through AI, so we were able to upload images of after the tornadoes and that really helped, and the hurricanes, and that helped accelerate emergency response and insurance claims by weeks. So instead of taking months for them to come and assess everything and they were able to

[00:19:22] like go back go to the insurance emergency responders and it the whole process just took weeks so that's just one example of how if we form together we can just accelerate things for our community and the real question is why are we not moving faster as a region and the answer is coordination right now everybody's working on AI separately you have private entities doing it like us you have government agencies that are starting to dabble with the ask questions you have policies that are being formed on a federal level a state level but the answer is coordination so and you have academic institutions so if everyone is working separately it works except it's not as productive because we

[00:20:01] are risking fragmented pipelines and we are risking like duplicate work and investments so how do we bring it together a coalition is definitely needed because it'll be a unifying force it'll help advance in coordinated efforts so that everything will work together so that everyone is using shared resources and we can use the same test beds and we can share the data with each other instead of academic institutions private and government institutions all doing it separately having a coordinated effort is helpful to bring everyone together and be able to share the wealth of knowledge as well as see what works for

[00:20:40] maybe works for others a coalition model is also important because no one entity can do it alone nobody can take AI and implement in all their different agencies and they can't do it adopt it educate and you know live it out on a practical level alone we need to work off of each other and we have another product that was an AI product and it was for first incidents response reporting um but it didn't work until citizens started using it law enforcement started coming together and saying okay we can use the data off of this just me taking a picture of like a threat

[00:21:15] incident will not work it has to be all together um so it can centralize efforts amplify reach de-risk adoption and also educate the people as they start to use this because ai is a scary for a lot of people and it also standardizes model development across all environments so what we can implement in the healthcare field can also be implemented in the IT field or the government field or education. But if we share our resources, how we do that. So there's three core pillars that I was proposing as we looked into this with Rebecca and her team is AI assurance and responsible

[00:21:51] test beds. Let Fairfax County be the sandbox for safe, explainable, and interoperable AI. So have the test beds here. Work with NIST and other government agencies that are already doing this and trying to you know figure out the policies for deep fake audio detection or guardrails for the large language models for educating for permitting for defense so let Fairfax County have the test beds that we can all the institutions come and work off of workforce transfer from transformation and inclusion equip workers across industries with credentials and AI ethics prompt engineering applied AI start at the high school level to the

[00:22:30] college level to the workforce and so scale to impact we must bring AI literacy into Nova GMU high school classrooms with apprenticeships internships and exposure educating people is what is going to where this is the starting point and then mission aligned commercial commercialization so let AI with a conscience right now AI is scary it can be used for all kinds of things but let's figure out what problems we're trying to solve what we're trying to make easier whether it's traffic issues housing equity health access and work with the needed data sets and work with the needed agencies to

[00:23:09] lower the cost of experimentation low and reduce duplicate efforts and use what we have to raise the ceiling of impacts so I think success is going to be where Fairfax County is AI is trustworthy inclusive and local and so we are fair governed transparent and we use AI to work together and I think the coalition will be key in coordination like we already have the talent we already have the skill sets within like all these companies and people are investing and we have the reach of the federal government state government so we need the coordination piece to bring it all together and that's where the

[00:23:46] coalition will come in to play and if we do bring in GMU in Nova all the big players in Nova work with Fairfax County it will give people a higher trust saying hey oh like everyone is working together and now they are showing us how to be educated in this they're showing us the pathway and how to use AI in our fields so I think it'll also increase trust and I'm bringing everyone together also will help there to be policy engagement that really works for the practical level sometimes we come up with all these ideas and like oh we should do this this this and this in health care and this in the government But if you come together as a coalition, you say, okay, this is what we want to achieve in a year.

[00:24:24] We want the summit or we want to, you know, implement it this way. And we share the infrastructure. We have the policy engagement. We have pilot programs. And we work together. Then we can kind of see what works, what doesn't work. And we kind of build off of that to build that coordination effort together and make sure that, you know, we're addressing whatever issues are critical as well as the coordinated effort of, like, okay, We have shared resources, lower cost, and we can actually get things done.

[00:24:51] Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for sharing that, Cheryl, very much from a policy perspective. And I think that local governments and state governments can be the test bed for demonstrating how AI can be used to better run a government that the federal government will look to.

[00:25:17] So I think those contributions that you made were great. I'll share my thoughts and viewpoints as it relates to industry. So for those of you who may not be familiar with the Northern Virginia Tech Council, we represent the region's tech ecosystem and have been in operation since 1991.

[00:25:36] And we have over 500 member companies. We just had our Impact AI Summit two weeks ago. So what I'm going to share with you is what I'm reading, what I'm learning, And I'm going to come and share this with you from a generalistic point of view.

[00:25:52] Let me remind everyone that in January, President Trump did sign an executive order to make, to drive and encourage the United States to be the global dominant leader in AI. So what does that mean? OSTP, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, then requested an RFI from industry and thought leaders to say, how does that show up?

[00:26:18] If anybody wants to follow me on LinkedIn or MBTC, you can see my short summaries on some of this that I'm talking about. So to be a leader as a nation in AI, you can't just put your stake in the ground and say it.

[00:26:36] You've got to deliver on that. So what is needed to be a dominant leader in AI? We outline four main things. Data, you've got to make sure you have the right data. You've got to have the right talent to not just build the models, but also the workforce is important.

[00:26:54] Making sure that individuals know how to prompt AI to use it. And it can be very specialized in areas of health care and more general, like in a marketing type role or whatnot. But that is absolutely key that American workers need to know how to prompt it, not just build it.

[00:27:14] Digital infrastructure, critical. You guys, yes, we are the data center capital of the world here, but we don't have enough energy to power the AI movement now. I don't know if you guys saw the article in Barron's yesterday or this weekend that, you know, the Dominion Energy wind farms are at risk off the coast of Virginia, southeast Virginia.

[00:27:37] We need more energy solutions, so infrastructure is imperative. And then standards and regulations are important. So we've got to make sure that we are using AI and regulating it so that we protect our residents, our citizens, our communities.

[00:27:58] So we want to use tech for good, but we also have to be cautious. What else do I want to share with you? Look, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago. Again, I posted this on my LinkedIn post that said, and it was written by two leaders from Palantir.

[00:28:16] Everybody should know who these companies are. Palantir, Andruil, Anthropic, I call them the new kids on the block. You know, they're coming here, and there's a reason. They have, you know, solutions to help us with our defense primarily and how we're operating our government faster, safer, all those things.

[00:28:39] And, you know, sometimes they get a bad rap, but they are here, and we should all know who they are. Two senior executives at Palantir wrote an op-ed that said, we're winning the wrong, we're going after the wrong AI race.

[00:28:55] It's not just about who's building the largest language model and who's, you know, manufacturing, you know, GPUs, et cetera. that's important, but what's going to differentiate our nation is what government is using it effectively and what businesses and what industries are using it to have better outcomes.

[00:29:22] And AI is being infused everywhere right now, but there are still so many companies that are still unsure of how to use it. And what I hear from thought leaders is companies need to have an AI strategy it's better to just get started you can start small make sure you're educating your staff on how to use it I give this example all the time I I've told my fellow colleagues here that this reminds me of like the early 1990s when I started my career here and Microsoft you know office rolled out they are I

[00:30:01] worked at a company for a whole week we had to go in and learn you know this because it shifted from DOS to Word. I don't know if you guys remember this time, but like we literally had a week where we went in and we learned how to use Word and Excel and PowerPoint. And that seems funny right now, but we are in a state right now where we have to do the same with AI.

[00:30:23] And with my small team of 12, I want everyone using it now, but I've got to help them understand how and what platforms and are we using open AIs or non-open AIs and just something that everybody should know, Open AI is actually closed, so just kind of something funny to be aware of.

[00:30:42] And then I'm sure if you're living under a rock, which you're not, I mean, all of last week, Axios report behind the curtain, a white-collar bloodbath. You know, AI is going to have a major impact on incoming entry-level jobs in our country.

[00:31:01] And it's unfortunate, like even in software engineering, which is the degrees we told everybody to go pursue. So my message here is for the region, for Northern Virginia, for Fairfax County, we should, as a county, look at how we want to use AI to better serve our residents, but also encourage our companies to begin using it.

[00:31:27] They can start small and understanding its power and then educating its people and its staff. Jennifer, thank you. Always a tough act to follow, both of you guys. Peter Kanigan, CEO of Enable Intelligence, and we're at the very beginning for part of AI creation.

[00:31:48] So we take the raw data from our clients and try to turn those into AI tools. So everything from what is the data to curating it to then labeling it to say what it is, to train an AI to do something that's usually wrong, and then retraining it again to get it to where it's right. We do that mostly for defense intelligence in critical industries like health care, financial services, things like that.

[00:32:11] Anyway, when Rebecca reached out and the team reached out on this, I was a little ambivalent about the idea of a coalition because there are a lot of them. And to me, AI is, it's like we want to lead in AI.

[00:32:27] It's like saying I want to lead in the Internet. It's not a thing to do. But in talking with Cheryl and Jennifer and others in listening to this, I think my interest or my encouragement would be to focus on the applications of AI, leading in the applications of how to use these tools.

[00:32:50] So not quite as far back as the 90s when we were learning MS-DOS to Windows. I remember that very clearly, walking around with my little floppy disk to learn things when I was working in a congressional office. to even the early days of the internet boom here in this region when AOL was a leader here, right, and we were going to lead in the internet, and what did that mean?

[00:33:12] Here, I think it means that application. I tend to think of maybe it's a little old school. It used to be that all R&D started in Washington, D.C., ran, you know, up until the mid-80s. It was 80%, 90% of the world's R&D budget came, you know, within 10 miles of where we're sitting right now and then applied out, and now we see more of it.

[00:33:32] coming applied back in. So it comes from California or Boston or Taiwan or Ukraine or wherever it may be. But Fairfax, I think, embodies that transitional phase, right? We're just outside of the Beltway or sometimes in the Beltway. But that connection between R&D and its application, and in this case, AI. And I would footstomp and jump on that. A coalition here that leads the way in teaching how we become the workforce that applies AI is a unique aspect that we can do here from what people learn either when they're doing their government service,

[00:34:11] where they're working in R&D facilities, whether they're going to GMU, Nova, our great public school system, or even many of the companies that are here, whether it's Leidos or Palantir, or, of course, in the same breath, enabled intelligence at that same size of those mega companies.

[00:34:30] But what I have found is the workforce that we have coming in doesn't know how to use the tools. Or when they do, it's Mary Conway who just joined us, she's in our back, she's listening in, one of our youngest team members, she knows how to use these tools better than anyone else on our team, except for maybe our director of data science.

[00:34:48] Because that's what she's been learning, how to use Copilot to begin writing a proposal. How do we use some of these tools to better understand our financial records? How do we know our logistics trail? Can we use AI to figure out? I was talking with Clark Construction after one of these.

[00:35:05] When's the best time to buy glass or lumber based on historical trends? What economics has been doing? What has been the GDP? What's the interest rate? What is going on with bank loans at the time? What is going on with forestation or even shipping channels through the Sundress Strait in Asia?

[00:35:21] All impact those costs. And AI is a tool that can really help analyze that data and help point the way. But that's an application. It's not coding, it's understanding a business case, and then how do I apply it so we don't make some of the mistakes that are, you know, sometimes funny, sometimes sad in the applications of AI.

[00:35:40] I mean, we saw this week HHS put out new guidance about certain medications or medical treatments, and it was clearly written by AI because it cited medical journal articles that do not exist by authors that don't exist.

[00:35:55] It was clearly created using an LLM, and it got stuff wrong, and that's HHS, right? It's supposed to be setting the – I don't think they did it on purpose. I mean, they're just, you know, trying to use it. Or you hear about Zillow, not to just pick on our government friends, but Zillow wrote off $150 million three years ago because it used an AI to try to assess which homes were best for flipping and buying and then selling again, and had a quirk in the data that it used.

[00:36:23] It didn't use correct data. It didn't use it and train on appropriate data. They didn't understand what they were using for appropriate data. And lost $150 million and laid off 2,000 employees. So not doing this, not knowing how to apply it, and those are all application problems.

[00:36:41] They're not technical problems. They're application. Did I use the right data? Did I know how to use the tool? Those kind of things. Those lead to real impacts, real negative impacts. And there's also very positive impacts that can come from the USAIA as well. Of course, I wouldn't be in business if I didn't think that.

[00:36:57] But that application, that is, I think, where very few people are really focusing their attention. And that's workforce. I would love to send, I have 150 going to 200 employees coming in.

[00:37:14] I would love to send them somewhere to Nova or GMU for some sort of class that says, here are the basics of applied AI in the workplace. I have no place to send them. This could be that place.

[00:37:34] Really enjoyed hearing all of those comments and, you know, so you brought a smile to my face, Jennifer, with the DOS, you know, MS tool suite. But I recall just maybe a little over a year ago you visited our presidential planning meeting and you were talking about as an early adopter using AI and I was inspired, right?

[00:38:03] Vice President of Research, I listened to this practical, you know, story that you told about just making your emails better. And that was like over a year ago, and so much has changed. And so I really, you know, see you as an early adopter and an inspiration for using these tools, you know, at that micro level, but also, you know, at the macro level for economic developments.

[00:38:31] I just wanted to say that and appreciated all of the comments. And so, as you've heard, you know, our blend of tech firms, federal contractors, universities, and a really diverse and highly educated workforce make us a great location.

[00:38:48] We have all of the ingredients for driving economic development with an AI coalition here at Fairfax County. And George Mason University is providing real leadership in this space. If you go to our website, gmu.edu slash AI, that's our front door to AI, and it is right there at the very top of our email address because it's a high priority for George Mason University, and I'll tell you a little bit about that.

[00:39:26] President Washington, who I'm representing here today, had the vision of appointing our first chief AI officer at a research university in Virginia.

[00:39:43] And that's Professor Amarda Shehu. She's our inaugural vice president and chief AI officer and responsible for building out our ecosystem. And I'll tell you, that happened last year, and she's been hard at work, and I'll give you some of the progress that we've made in the space.

[00:40:05] So our work at George Mason University is built on three pillars. We have the AI squared nexus, we have Patriot AI, and we have academic programs, and I'll tell you a little bit about each. Our AI squared nexus really represents our strategic vision.

[00:40:25] that unites education, research, workforce development, and community engagement. And it's based on four principles. Integrating AI to transform education, research, and operations. Inspiring with AI to advance higher education and learning.

[00:40:46] Innovating with AI to lead in responsible AI-enabled discovery and advancements across disciplines. And finally, impacting with AI. So those are our four principles that really guide our strategic vision, so the AI squared nexus.

[00:41:05] In terms of infrastructure, we have Patriot AI, which is a groundbreaking platform that gives secure, accessible access to over 18,000 generative AI models. And finally, we're doing a lot with our academic programs, including a minor in ethics and AI, a graduate certificate in responsible AI.

[00:41:31] We have a master's in AI launching in fall 2025, and an undergraduate course, which I mentioned previously, called AI for All, which will ensure all Mason students are AI ready. So we're not just teaching AI, but we're really embedding ethics, access, and impact into the George Mason University journey.

[00:41:58] So Jennifer mentioned this briefly. So just last month, George Mason University hosted the first ever Virginia AI and Education Summit with the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia, Bringing together leaders from K through 12, higher ed and industry to co-create the future of AI and learning and work.

[00:42:23] So, I'd like to offer a few areas where I think we can move the needle with an AI coalition.

[00:42:41] And I got examples for each one of those. I'll try to be brief. So the three areas where I think we can move the needle, and you've heard these already, is accelerating business adoption with AI, upskilling our workforce, and ensuring ethical deployment.

[00:42:57] So the coalition can really move the needle there, and George Mason is already hard at work in these areas. So in terms of accelerating business adoption, we received a $1 million congressionally directed spending project that was sponsored by Senator Kane to launch the nation's first center for small business AI innovation.

[00:43:27] And this was led by or is being led by Professor Shehu, our chief AI officer, and Professor J.P. Singh, who's in our College of Public Policy. So we're supporting small businesses to adopt AI through a congressionally directed project.

[00:43:49] If we're talking about upskilling our workforce, just recently we had an AI for defense event that develops DOD-driven smart solutions.

[00:44:05] Kami Sanghera led that, and that was for K-12 students, an outreach event. And then when we talk about ethical deployment, you all may remember, this seems like eons ago, the TTIP project, right, that attracted Amazon HQ2.

[00:44:28] Well, you know, the universities in Virginia are still making good use of that initiative and the funding that came with that. So there's the FUSE building in Arlington, but there also was a provision for faculty hires. And so let me tell you about AI and ethics.

[00:44:45] We actually did thematic hires using our TTIP funds, and we've hired Dasha Press, who did a postdoc at the Harvard School for Internet and Society, and Dr. Tema Monroe-White.

[00:45:01] And they are experts at the intersection of policy and computer science and AI and the humanities and computer science, looking at things like carceral AI, to look at how we have to be careful with AI to make sure that it's not unfair in our penal system, and also looking at bias for AI models.

[00:45:30] That's Dr. Tameleman-Rowe White. And finally, we need to foster inclusive innovation that provides access to these tools. And to your point, Peter, you know, I see our maker spaces as not just being places to make physical things, but also to make virtual things and really having an open door to our community to provide access to kind of get people started with the AI space.

[00:46:07] And so I think that there's an opportunity for us to work together to leverage the infrastructure that we all have for driving economic development and supporting Fairfax County residents.

[00:46:26] And I'll just say one last thing before I conclude. So applications, I'm hearing as being super important, and so I was scanning through my e-mails, I was like, oh my gosh, I know I have this meeting coming up with NSF, and it turns out it's tomorrow, okay?

[00:46:44] And this meeting got delayed because of all the changes with the National Science Foundation and their cuts, but my colleague, who I worked with while I was at NSF, Barry Johnson, is a professor at UVA and he's on rotation at NSF, encouraged me to reach out to him on test bids.

[00:47:02] He says, look, Andre, NSF is investing a lot in test bids for critical technologies. That's going to be a key part of getting our ideas out of the university and put to good use. And so, you know, we had this conversation back around the holidays, and this meeting got postponed, but we're having it tomorrow.

[00:47:25] And I'm really excited about telling Barry, who's a division director, at least he was a division director at NSF until they changed their org structure. But I'm excited not to just tell him about this healthcare-related test bed that we have to dynamically evaluate AI, conversational AI models.

[00:47:51] I'm going to tell him about that. We have a faculty working on that, but I'm also going to tell them about this coalition and about Fairfax County and how we are looking at the applications of AI more broadly, not just at the university, but through our county, our business leaders, our municipal services, and our universities working together.

[00:48:14] Thanks. Thank you all so much. I feel like our work is done here. We got the experts. Amazing points. But now we really want to open it up and have a discussion. And so once again, kind of the proposed challenge statement on the question, sorry, on the table is to empower every Fairfax County business and their workers to quickly adopt and govern practical and safe AI tools that enhance productivity, creativity, and job efficiency.

[00:48:44] And here's a couple of kind of questions for discussion. Supervisor Stork is going to kind of moderate but I think the one of the largest questions is is that challenge statement appropriate and is an AI coalition an effective step to kind of move forward and I'm sure everyone has a lot of thoughts on that I just want to quickly note that the outcome of this meeting you know me and my team we are taking notes we are listening, we are really listening for is this a next step, do we want to build

[00:49:22] this into our work program, how and who should we work with, so we will be taking this all in, we will be consolidating kind of the findings or the outcomes of this meeting and share it all back with you just as kind of to make sure that there is going to be a loop back, but if we want to just open it up for questions, sorry, to respond to these key questions and your thoughts.

[00:49:48] - And also just to say that, first and foremost, that Fairbanks County recognizes the importance of this and like everybody else, we're rushing to try to get up to speed. We, about a year ago, the county executive established a AI policy and we're internalizing that with our work here.

[00:50:07] We've got a long way to go and I'll be the first to say that because I still don't feel anywhere close to up to speed, but I know that that's a key part of how we're gonna move forward. Andres, you had, I'm sorry, so it was a menace. Thank you very much, and thank you to all. It's great to see everyone here today.

[00:50:22] Great to be part of this. Thank you, Supervisor Stork, for running this meeting. My question is, can we go back one slide, please, to the statement? What I would look at, just from my point of view, is we're not talking about the potential environmental concerns that might come from this.

[00:50:43] I think that when we look at putting together a statement like this, I think it would be irresponsible not to have a look at the environmental concerns that might happen. I think that as a county, obviously, we're trying to incorporate, and we have very specific goals that we're trying to meet environmentally.

[00:51:00] And I think that it would be really important to make sure that we're not moving forward without putting a focus or a lens on the impact environmentally to our residents and to the county. Thank you. I'm really looking for business industry leaders, others, too.

[00:51:16] What do you think? I mean, is this something that's reasonable or this is another government program and, you know, how those goes and blah, blah, blah? No, we need to know how do we keep ahead of this, how we keep moving forward. So I would note, I think that statement makes a lot of sense.

[00:51:32] I think a goal around sustainability or some mention of sustainability would make a great deal of sense in this statement. But I also worry that this statement is not quite ambitious enough, especially in terms of talking about driving innovation or leading in innovation.

[00:51:51] I agree with all the statements that AI applications are enormously important. This is also a time of enormous change and innovation within the industry. And I think it's important to the future of Fairfax County that we position ourselves as helping lead that innovation cycle within AI as well.

[00:52:12] So that's, to me, when I look at the statement, I don't, I see not enough mention of that. I think there's an opportunity. We've talked previously, I think, at our first meeting about drawing on the workforce and younger workers who are coming into Fairfax County, grew up in Fairfax County, often leave, potentially don't come back. It'd be wonderful to set up some kind of an innovation ecosystem to draw those folks back as they start up businesses, you know, some kind of Y Combinator model or something like that. Especially since one of the dangers I think we face as a county is the cycle of small business creation that has fueled Fairfax County

[00:52:50] for a long time is going away. The government's not necessarily going to subsidize small businesses and do as many set-asides for small businesses moving forward. So that cycle of small business creation in Fairfax County has learned to rely upon may not be there in the future, and I think we, again, need to be proactive in thinking about how we create a new cycle of small business creation and fuel innovation.

[00:53:14] Thank you. Other business industry leaders? I think the idea of a coalition to address this is very important, But I think maybe the focus needs to be on what is new business, because AI serves one purpose, and that is to automate.

[00:53:32] And so the more AI you inject into the universe, the more work that is going to be happening by agentic AI that is not happening by people. And so if I could just share a couple of things that my intuition is telling me is that Fairfax County should become the number one most favorable and attractive place to start an AI business.

[00:53:52] The infrastructure has to be there to support the business. You have to make Fairfax County extremely attractive for young, talented people to live in. And I think there are probably three levers you have. First, I think cost of living has to be addressed.

[00:54:11] We have zoning and setback and every other high-density rule that has regulation that is a challenge. You want to attract people. Young, talented, tech-minded people want to live in places that are nicer and newer, and they want to live amongst people in a denser world, then we're probably all accustomed to.

[00:54:30] I think that is point one. Point two is I think you have to start prepping students now, and I think you have to prep them at the ninth grade. Once upon a time, plumbing, welding, electrical, auto mechanics, craftsmanship were trades in high school.

[00:54:48] They are not anymore, and you notice that the family-supporting wages of plumbing and electrical and craftsmanship and welding have sort of disappeared. We're importing people to do that work at low cost now. And so I think you should start thinking about AI in high school as a trade.

[00:55:06] To be clear, so I run technology at Inova Health across Northern Virginia. I have eliminated every college degree requirement from every single position in my division because I want people to come with skills, not education, and skills are happening very early.

[00:55:24] And the reason that you see so many Gen Z and Gen Y people being resistant to AI is they think it's going to take their jobs, which they're not wrong about. I think that if you look at environments that have blown up from a startup perspective, if you look at Austin, Texas, they made it attractive.

[00:55:42] The only way to get these people who really know these things to come here is to create an incentive for startup companies in high tech who one day will go public that can incentivize the best minds with large stock option grants to come and be here. And so just to summarize that, start early, educate your children, change how we think about zoning here to create new communities that are more dense. Think about how we address schooling. Think about how we can create an environment where they have opportunity to test, they have opportunity to extract from the

[00:56:19] government, they have opportunity to utilize all of the large business here, and realize that the problem that my colleague here mentioned about this sort of small business as it's always been going away, I can't overestimate that enough because AI is coming for work. And I'll give you a clear example of why it is. Right now in health care, health care across this country is one of the largest employers of people at all skill levels outside of being a physician. 60% of all work that happens in a hospital system is a language skill, which means it's largely clerical

[00:56:57] and administrative. You are moving documents, you are moving paper, you are moving everything, and it's about typing and about communicating and around research and generating. 60% of the work that is happening today in a health system is available to today's AI capabilities. It's a matter of implementation, which is not a problem. We're working on that, and they're working on it across this country, which means that 40% of all the work that happens in a health system today will be replaced by AI. The idea is not to reduce the size of our staff, but the idea is to grow without adding staff. And the things that I'm buying is I'm buying utility and tools from

[00:57:36] startup companies like Alex Carf at Palantir. I happen to have started their healthcare product at Cleveland Clinic while I was there. But they're not hiring here. They're hiring in California. They're hiring in places where they're highly dense, highly new, highly modern, and they're hiring offshore. And so start early, make this the trades. And I think that that is how you do what your mission is, is to create economic opportunity for the region. Because the old way of doing business, I think, is not going to be the future. So is that a coalition? Is that something you think is helpful or not? Well, I think so, right? Because I think you've got

[00:58:11] planning and zoning to talk about because of how we think about building single-family homes here. I think you have schooling. I think you have tech leaders and investors. I think my colleague Jennifer here would be very keen on having startups coming to this town to invest in here locally because I bet right now you and Flair and Sequoia and everyone else are investing in California and Seattle and Austin and Phoenix and so I think that's what your coalition starts to look like because it's going to be more of a societal shift and a societal adoption problem

[00:58:47] than it's going to be training people in AI because the ninth graders today they're learning it because they're doing all their homework with it. Thank you. Yeah so fully agree with Matt see The thing is for us to attract AI business or any business, we need to have an AI native workforce.

[00:59:06] An experienced workforce, by far, we can make them into a good AI users. Only the younger generation, we can make them into an AI native workforce. So few recent data that was a little bothersome. For the first time in 32 years, the unemployment rate of recent graduates is higher than that of the general unemployment rate.

[00:59:26] Because recent graduates are used for future workforce planning. Now enterprises are using AI for future workforce plan and we are also we have to focus on high school graduates starting from ninth grade and also college graduates. The reason is for the first time in known human history, we are preparing these categories of students to a job which will not exist when they graduate. So the awareness is very, very important. If you don't do that, it's going to be a problem. I'll give you some examples. Recently, I had a dinner with an executive from Novartis.

[00:59:57] I'm not a health care expert, so sorry if I make any mistakes. This gentleman said, drugs are nothing but protein reacting with another protein. That's how it is. So there is a nonprofit in California creating all diseases that can be cured by drug. And they're going to make it available for all students, everybody.

[01:00:15] And AI, there's a high potential within a few years, a few decades, we might have a solution to create drugs for all diseases that we know. It might be true, it's not. If some students are interested in health care, that's the direction it is going. My personal thing is coalition is the right one, but the focus should be our native workforce.

[01:00:31] More importantly, I think we need a knowledge repository, like a knowledge garage. Like that's the key thing. That's what we are missing. I think we should start small. If I'm a high school major, if I want to go in programming, I would say don't program because the future of the program is going to be vibe coding. That's it. Simple.

[01:00:46] So you have to have that knowledge of where to go and what to learn. I would personally prefer that to be a knowledge garage be a starting point. Thank you. I'm going to call on Supervisor Palachuk and then I'll go over to Jennifer next. Thank you so much.

[01:01:02] Sorry, I'm like jumping out of my seat. So excited to hear some of what I'm hearing. So in the past week, well, I am really excited to hear ninth grade and up because college is too late, honestly, right? I went back to visit. The new TJ principal was also in the first graduating class.

[01:01:18] He's fabulous. He's looking for more mentorship. So those of you in the business industry, great mentorships. But I couldn't agree more that we definitely have to think about what we're so good at. And I hope my college isn't hearing this, but I learned a lot more in FCPS my 12 years here than I did in my four years in college.

[01:01:38] The skills, the hands-on learning, the project-based learning, the adapted learning, whether it was in the sciences and the languages and the humanities. And our high school seniors need to see that sooner. I was sitting next to Dr. Ponce yesterday, so we absolutely, I know, I believe Dr. Reed was busy today, have to rethink.

[01:01:58] I've been talking to people who created the TJ. How do we create the next, not TJ, but the next academies that really adapt or enhance our academy programs so that we're tapping into this incredible talent, diverse talent that we have here in FCPS that does leave the county, Whether it's cost of living, whether it's enjoying where they live and being able to be 20 and 30 and then 40 and 50 years old here.

[01:02:25] And how do we tap into also the industries that are here, our health industries here, right? Construction, I heard Clark be brought up. HIT is, I believe, in construction only 1% is spent on R&D. I don't know if I'm correct on that.

[01:02:41] But there's so much opportunity. I know that modular homes are being created, ways to improve what we are seeing here. We have defense, we have construction, we have health. And how do we bring problem solving and the workforce issues and people of all ages reskilling or upskilling and have more of that opportunity for our young people to see that they don't have to leave this area to get the opportunities that they need.

[01:03:09] And I've changed on this because I married an IT guy who didn't finish college, and his mom was a very unhappy educator. But she gave him a computer and he taught himself. And he hasn't had, he's felt bad that he hasn't had that college degree, but he went straight into the IT sector and is a problem solver, and so is his brother.

[01:03:27] And so how do we tap into that sooner and help? I think the biggest thing we have in Fairfax County is our people. And how do we do a better job and figure out those problems that we need to tackle? - Thank you, Mr. Procek.

[01:03:42] - I have Jennifer Shutter and I want to hear from every single industry person, hopefully before I hear from some of the board members, even though I want to hear from the board members, but that's really the core reason we're here. We want to hear from you, so thank you. - Yeah, no thank you. I think a lot of people have made really great comments and I think there's very similar kind of themes in what everyone's saying.

[01:04:02] I think to answer your question directly, yes, I think there has to be a coalition. I don't know what the alternative is, but there needs to be something that's formed and I think people have made some really great points. I think Matt's point about, you know, making sure that you're attracting talent to start AI companies is incredibly important.

[01:04:20] You know, Ron mentioned having kind of a Y Combinator. So I think that the startup ecosystem, you know, with one bucket is very, very important, again, to draw talent, to, you know, encourage people to start businesses, to be in that space very heavily. I think to Peter's point and also Matt and a couple other people's points, education is paramount.

[01:04:41] I would even say start earlier than ninth grade. The technology is changing so incredibly rapidly, and this is like the next wave of internet, of technology, and it's here, and it's been here actually for a while. It's just now people, it's being adopted, and it's evolving as a technology, and it will continue to evolve.

[01:05:02] But I think the education piece is really important, and to Peter's point, I think, you know, you also have to focus with a coalition in mind of, you know, how do we advance companies that are already, you know, in business today? And the best way to do that is through application, is how do we, you know, A, what is AI?

[01:05:22] And I think people, a lot of people are scared to admit that, but this is, the technology is evolving very, very quickly, and a lot of people don't really know. It's like, where do, you know, is it chat GPT? Like, what is, what is AI? And so having a starting place and maybe having it be, you know, digital education that you can find online that just walks you through very simply what AI is, how it can be utilized, how it's utilized across sectors, and, you know, who's spearheading and championing AI within our community, I think is just really important. So I think it's going to have to be kind of a multi-pronged approach, but I think a coalition is certainly the best way to do

[01:06:00] it. Thank you. Okay. And then we're going to go, I want to go to another industry person too. Yes, please. I just want to build on what Jennifer said. There are companies out there that are starting to create platforms to help businesses manage their AI. So one in particular, Trustable AI, they're based in Roslyn, and this platform does three things. Actually, I think they might be working with you. And so just to break it down, they'll help an organization take inventory of where AI is being used across the organization so that you as a leader know.

[01:06:38] Number two, doing this all from memory, having a plan in place in case you have, I don't want to say breach, but a hallucination. Okay, something just went wrong. What do we do? Here are the steps. And then point three is working to make sure you, to the best of your ability, you're following NIST standards and other regulatory standards.

[01:07:00] So there's this whole new market of tools to help you manage your AI across the organization, so your enterprise. I just want to build on what you were saying. Thank you. Thank you. And I really wanted to hear from John Ciaffini.

[01:07:17] John, do you have any thoughts about what we've been discussing and whether a coalition makes sense or is there enough out there already, we don't need a new one? I mean, what should we be thinking about? I tend to speak pretty bluntly, so forgive me. First of all, all businesses are AI business today.

[01:07:37] They're one and the same. So the question is, how do you start and empower more businesses being established in the Fairfax area? I tend to look at, as a venture capitalist myself and startup operator, you need three things. You need people, you need access to capital, and importantly, you need access to customers.

[01:07:57] I think, in some regard, forgive me, you're at a natural disadvantage on two of the three. and you're competing against West Coast, right? It's West Coast mentality versus East Coast. I've been at VCs since early 2000s, and the West Coast VCs just have better terms.

[01:08:15] They're much more company favorable. If I'm left with a choice between a West Coast term sheet and an East Coast term sheet, I'm taking the West Coast and I'm starting my company in Silicon Valley. And it's just how it is, right? So what keeps you here in my defense tech prism, that's all I live through is defense tech, it's access to customers.

[01:08:34] So you have to accelerate and leverage the fact that you have this proximity to the federal government. The NRO, the NSA, the CIA, the Department of Defense, et cetera, they're all right here in your backyard. So how do you make it easier for the next John Serafini to start a company in this area and build here as opposed to building with Founders Fund or A16Z or Sequoia in the West Coast, right?

[01:09:03] Access to primes. Lidos is here. Lidos is an investor of Hawkeye. Lockheed is as well. Raytheon, Airbus, Jacobs. Having those primes invest in great startup companies in this area is a boon. Helping companies get access to customers through intermediaries like DIU and In-Q-Tel. Extremely valuable.

[01:09:30] Finding mechanisms for getting companies that are going to be doing classified work, access to FCLs, that's crucial. Facilities clearance licenses so that they can do classified work quicker and access to clearances. All these things allow these companies to build the great next set of AI functionality that will empower them to create companies here and employ great people coming after universities here.

[01:09:56] Those are some of the things that are at the top of my head. Thank you, John. And Victor, I want to make sure that we at least get an opportunity for the non-Board members to speak first, so if you have anything else to add to the conversation and coalition discussions, and I'm going to call on Supervisor Herity after that.

[01:10:13] All right, I'm going to call on Brian after that. Microphone. I believe that a coalition is necessary, and really the comments that have been made, I think, are quite appropriate. And the last one made by John is paramount.

[01:10:33] We do have a very different environment than the West Coast, and we really do need to leverage our local advantages as much as possible. Thank you. And I just realized that I had not caught on Anthony Chang yet. And Mr. Chang, please. Just bear with me one second. I just want to ask a question of John.

[01:10:49] You gave me one, which was a term sheet. What was the other, because you said there was two out of three that was a disadvantage. I'm just curious. That was the more controversial, which is access to talent. I mean, you just got Stanford pumping out kids who just wake up wanting to go work at startups as opposed to, you know, do you have that same DNA here?

[01:11:10] That's the question. Is that as important, John? I mean, as a startup person, I'm sorry to jump in, but I just don't see why we should compete with Silicon Valley at all. We're talking about applied AI. We're not looking for a company that's going to go from, I mean, I'm a 20% net margin.

[01:11:26] I couldn't scare up VC capital because I'm not going to say I'm a $10 billion business, right? I don't care about getting a whole bunch of Stanford AI software engineers. I want people who are going to fix Clark's problem. I want people who are going to fix Matt's problem.

[01:11:42] I want to go say, how can I use ChatGBT, a genetic AI tool, something that you can do with computer vision? How do I apply that to help his radiology department or fix his EMRs? I don't care about starting a new large language model.

[01:11:59] There's five of them, and only one's going to win. But this place does apply. So your other point, John, I think was excellent. I mean, I think they're both right. I just don't think we can compete against the West Coast. But that ability to turn a DIU contract, an AFWERX contract, an In-Q-Tel startup work plan into an actual business, As opposed to, I got my $2 million work plan or my first SIBR, and now, hey, I'm a million and a half and go there, dead.

[01:12:25] But if you can say I turned that million and a half billion into a program of record or I can apply it to something else, you just made a real company that hired 200 people. You made a Hawkeye at that point. So I would just note the distinction you're making between startup culture and application, I think, is not actually the way the field is evolving.

[01:12:45] I think Silicon Valley is full of startups who are figuring out really interesting ways to apply the technology, and we're seeing a blurring between what kind of how the government operates and how the government requires AI to be integrated into systems and how the commercial world does it, with the government moving far more toward the commercial world, which is to say, I think we need to do both, right?

[01:13:09] We need to be experts in how you apply AI and companies that are closer to kind of the way we do it in government today and we need to be attracting companies that are that see the government market as a very attractive one but you know are also kind of leaders in the application of AI. Supervisor Stork I'll be fast I think the only thing that we're missing is all this focus on the talent at the entry point in the career ladder is missing the generational opportunity now which is when we think about artificial intelligence, all of the intelligence, as John

[01:13:47] mentioned, is in GovTech. Everything that's highly regulated, whether it's, and I've said it before here, defense, education, health, infrastructure, energy, all of that intelligence is here. And there's a once in a generation of, I don't want to call it freedom, but loosening of all of the people who know these things that are 40 50 something that are thinking about what they're doing next and if i think the county to bring it back to your challenge statement i think the county

[01:14:21] has a unique opportunity to be the convener of that talent and intelligence with the money and with the customer and if you could have those three parties in the room and unleash the the risk aversion that many of the people who have been working in government for so long have if you could inspire them to say oh wow there's money in the room that'll back my idea and my my knowledge and there's companies that'll hire us if we do it i think the county will unleash

[01:14:58] a lot of energy and investment as a result of that that the west coast in new york can't okay I had Supervisor Herity, and then I know Supervisor Pearman after that. I'm going to be quick. This has been very good, and thank you, Matt, John.

[01:15:15] I mean, all the comments were good. That challenge statement, I think, is a retention statement because any company that doesn't do that won't be around. To go back to, I think, what Matt said, I mean, if we're going to have a challenge statement, it's going to be how do we grow the AI application and that sort of industry.

[01:15:36] So I would, that, to go back to the mission you've assigned us, if a company doesn't do that, and I'm happy the county's doing a pretty good job of that, except in the trading area. In my opinion, we've got some work to do there, and we'll be taught.

[01:15:52] I chaired the board's information technology committee, but, so we've got work to do ourselves, but we've done a lot of good things, certainly with the policy statement. I think if we do form a coalition, I think it belongs on the private side.

[01:16:08] I look back into the early days of venture capital. It was Northern Virginia Tech Council that kind of founded that. And we just had the CFO Awards last night, which was a pretty big group. But we took on how do you convene and challenge.

[01:16:28] So I think we work with either NVTC or the Northern Virginia Chamber. And whoever listed talent, startup capital, we've been working on startup capital for a while. All of our investors are risk adverse. They come out of the GovCon space, sell their companies, and they don't know how to invest money in things that are risky.

[01:16:50] But we're working on that with Grub State, thanks to large part to Rodney and some of the stuff we're doing there. And to go back to Dahlia's comment, ninth grade might not be too early, but it's educating the pipeline, having the resources available, and then how do we celebrate ourselves as a leader and show off what we got here?

[01:17:11] Because I think that's part of it. We just don't do a very good job of that. But I'm going to lay that on Jennifer's table. Supervisor, Mr. Chairman, then Supervisor Benjamin. Just really briefly on the challenge statement, I actually don't think it's a retention statement.

[01:17:29] I think it's worse. I think this statement implies this isn't already happening. And if I wasn't in this area and read this statement, I would say, wow, is Fairfax County in 1985? I mean, honestly, it needs to be far more aggressive. It needs to presume this is part of our daily life already to inspire future growth in that area.

[01:17:48] And we should be taking the lead, patting ourselves on the back at the things that have already been done. And the industries that we have already working on this stuff that are right here in our backyard. For whatever reason, they are here, and we should be taking credit for that. This needs to be far more aggressive.

[01:18:05] The other thing I would say is, in terms of young people, I have two young people at home, And my, you know, eighth grader is ahead of my 11th grader already in this stuff to the point about when they start. Ninth grade is too late. It needs to be a lot earlier than that.

[01:18:22] Our folks are ahead of us. Our kids are ahead of us. And maybe the school system is even behind in acknowledging and inspiring those kids where they can be at a very young age. And then lastly, and we've talked about this a lot as a county, where creating spaces where young people and talent want to be.

[01:18:40] Being aggressive in density, creating places where people can live and work. The young people who are looking at where they want to live are looking at where the companies are that can hire them, where the employers are that are flexible, and where their lifestyle can be accommodated on the ground.

[01:18:58] And so we need help from industry as well in supporting creation of those areas. Politically, it's difficult. We have vision, but sometimes we are afraid of density, and we cannot be. We need to be thinking about Fairfax County 25, 30, 40 years from now, not 10 years ago, and not be afraid to change our landscape and our places to be the places where people want to live.

[01:19:26] And that is evolving, certainly in Merrifield. What we're doing along the Silver Line needs to be happening in more places in Fairfax County, and the density has to be aggressive to attract these young people. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Supervisor Beerman, then I'm going to call on Mr. Knight.

[01:19:42] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could you go to the next slide there? So the discussion questions. So I have a simple question. What does the AI coalition do, and what does the government of Fairfax County do to support the AI coalition?

[01:20:06] I just want brass tacks. So we've heard some things here. I mean, on zoning, for instance, density, you know, we just did parking reimagined. We've got on the audit work plan for next year, potentially, we've got something on residential permits. We are trying to build in various locations.

[01:20:24] I heard from, we heard from Ms. Minaj talking about assurances and responsible test beds. So does the AI coalition tell us what or give us ideas of what within our county government could be a test bed? Ms. Taylor talked about standards and regulations being important.

[01:20:44] So is the AI coalition recommending what standards and regulations the county should support? I saw Jen Van E., our legislative director, back there. We heard from a workforce that doesn't know how to use AI tools.

[01:21:00] So we've heard a lot about ninth grade as well. And that was Mr. Kant talking about doesn't know how to use AI tools. So is it the AI coalition comes up with what the investment for the county in our next budget is on on AI? You know, is it a certain partnership that we're doing with GMU?

[01:21:19] And by the way, I said budget, budget, budget. Tell us how much money, how much money do you need from the county and how do you need us to spend it? And lastly, I mean, I do I do want to say one thing, you know. So I spent three years in Silicon Valley going to law school. My dad wanted me to go to law school in Boston, and I went out and visited Stanford, and I called him up, and it was 82 degrees, and it was sunny.

[01:21:45] And I said, I'm going to law school here. It was in April. I'd come from Williams College where there was snow on the ground. Remember, he used to call me every single day and ask me what I was wearing that day, and I said, shorts and flip-flops. It's like this for 10 months of the year. We're different than Silicon Valley, which, by the way, every time I worry and get upset about the cost of living here, I just go on Zillow and look at Palo Alto.

[01:22:07] I mean, there's no barrier that has it even worse. So I'm just getting started, Dan. No, I'm actually about to be done. So my point, though, is that when we're thinking about this and we're trying to compare ourselves to Silicon Valley and we're trying to figure it out, we need to really be trying also to figure out what our strengths are.

[01:22:28] What is unique about us compared to Silicon Valley? I mean, look, I'll be honest. I moved back not only because I was from here, because I was a lawyer and I wanted to work in the legal capital of the world. Somebody from New York once said, I thought that was New York. I said, New York has the money. D.C. has the power.

[01:22:43] You know, so we need to figure out what it is that makes us special. And we need to know exactly what the AI coalition, if it exists, is doing and what business and industry needs us, us here as the government of Fairfax County to do to help.

[01:23:03] Thanks. Mr. Knight. Yes. Thank you. You know, this is an amazing conversation to listen to. And I'm going to talk more on that educational sector and the gems that you have in your backyard related to that and how we make this area attractive. But before I hit that, so Michael Jabbour, he's, I'm going to get his title right here, is Microsoft AI Innovation Speaker.

[01:23:23] He spoke at the GMU on the AI conference. We've heard a lot of analogies about what AI looks like relative to the world that he likened it to fire, right? This is not necessarily just a technology, right? You use it wrong, you burn your house down. If you don't use it, you don't survive.

[01:23:38] And the idea of it touching every aspect of everyone's life, it's not just in business, it's the cultural adoption of AI about how you make a list to go grocery shopping, about how you, right? And so while we think about it in the business sense in the business community, this risk and why people are afraid to adopt it, it's that it's so pervasive in everyone's life right now.

[01:24:02] And there's this uncertainty about how to use it. And so as we think about how do we help people overcome basically both that cultural fear of the tool as well as develop it, there's another challenge that we have. We're in the infancy, really, of this adoption.

[01:24:17] Maybe not infancy, right? That might have been like two years ago, right? But the challenge we've got is before when I would have an advisory board and I would sit across the table from an advisory board, I would get basically defined skills, responses, and outcomes that I needed from that partner.

[01:24:33] And the last advisory board, I won't out them, they asked me, what are you doing in AI? And I asked them, what do you need in AI? And we sat there and stared kind of blindly at each other for 10 seconds of uncomfortable silence. And I think that's where this coalition really comes in because it's sort of like a built team, if you haven't heard that.

[01:24:51] It's a business and industry leadership team, right? We are educational partners that want to be highly responsive to the needs of our business and industry community. It supports our students the best. It promotes the best socioeconomic mobility. It promotes the best stability of our students.

[01:25:06] We can't do that in the best case right now because our industry partners, they're still figuring it out. And so having a very tight team, more like Bilt, where the interaction is much more robust, which I could see this coalition sort of helping to support, than an advisory board that meets a couple times a year.

[01:25:24] This is moving faster than that. And also integrating that concept of research to then help employers understand what that looks like. And I know it was mentioned here, and I'm sorry, I don't know our colleague's name here. You mentioned it. It crosses all sectors, right? Business is AI now, right? It's every sector. We have a colleague who they couldn't hire junior accountants, right?

[01:25:41] So what did they do? They built out a program that did junior accounting. In that model, they created three problems that they didn't see. They broke their succession planning, so now they're senior accountants, don't have any succession. They now need someone who understands the accounting enough within the tool to make sure that it's still operating correctly.

[01:25:58] And they also then damaged their ability to promote that senior accountant up into the next level because they can't lose them because there's no one there to replace them. Right. So helping to think through those ideas, I think this is a perfect body to help us try to do that and sort of identify because we're there.

[01:26:14] Like we want to generate and identify what these credentials look like. they don't need to be degrees we just we want to make sure that what we're bringing forward and what we're able to teach and bring to the students and I can't agree more that starting early is the way to go it's much harder to unlearn something than it is to learn right and we know that as as our children are learning these tools if they're doing it unguided right they don't they recognize they lose data literacy right they they lose the ability to understand what that data means and data sourcing and all that kind of stuff. And I don't have to go into details on that with you guys, but thank you for the time.

[01:26:49] I'm going to call in Joe for just a minute, and then I'm going to go back to Supervisor Smith, and then Supervisor Lesky, you'll have the last word. Thank you. I just wanted to kind of summarize what the need for coalition is. So it's not just innovation, but the practicality, the safety, the governance, and the education.

[01:27:09] I think if you have a coalition that will focus on that, it will help us to share the infrastructure, operations, and a faster translation of research into practice. So again, safety, practicality, education, governance, and the coalition would be used to bring in the industry leaders, the government, Fairfax County, and everybody really in that space across sectors to really help share those resources, make sure no community or no workers left behind, increase education, bring it to the talent right now, and provide the goals.

[01:27:39] So instead of just talking in the air, it'll be like, okay, what are we doing one year, five year, 10 year? Well, how do we achieve these goals? And use it on a practical level. Thank you. Since Supervisor Smith, since I promised Supervisor Lutz last word, I'm going to go to Supervisor Alcorn, then Supervisor Lutz. Okay.

[01:27:57] I appreciate the conversation, Matt, about creating places where young people want to live. And so right now, I have a task force looking at Centerville and the land use there. And I have a diverse group of people, but they've been there a long time. So they talk about, well, how many stories can we make a building?

[01:28:14] And what can, you know, how do we pretty much keep it the same? And so I'm going to advocate with our staff that they listen to this part of this conversation because we as board members are part of these conversations and we understand the urgency to build different, to provide different.

[01:28:30] But I think a lot of our community isn't hearing that. And I think these are important things for the community to understand why we need change. So thank you. Thank you very quickly. I think this probably should be primarily a private sector-led initiative with the county playing some very specific support roles that probably need to be flushed out, you know, maybe as a testbed, one of the testbeds.

[01:29:00] And also something that really hasn't been mentioned, this probably needs a communication strategy. We need a comms strategy that would do several things, you know, reaching out to workforce, but also, and Victor's not here right now, But certainly, you know, in terms of the branding of Fairfax County as a place for the application of AI and as a world leader, that way I think we need.

[01:29:25] And then I think the other thing that's been talked about is on the land use side is in large part a public sector role. But there are so many things we're already doing. And frankly, some of it may just be changing a little bit of the way that we talk about what we're doing anyway in places like Tyson's and Reston.

[01:29:44] And maybe we need to acknowledge that our Workforce Dwelling Unit program isn't just for teachers and firefighters, but it's also for our entrepreneurs, because I know it's being used that way, and we might as well acknowledge it and build on it.

[01:30:00] So thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Supervisor. Supervisor Lusk. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll just say I'm really excited about this conversation and discussion here today. I think the most important thing that we have to do is differentiate Fairfax County from everybody else.

[01:30:16] So how are we differentiated on AI? What are we doing in terms of infrastructure and support to those who are thinking about starting a business? And I think if we start to create opportunities where we're growing businesses in AI, we're going to get investment.

[01:30:36] investors are going to see that this is the place where this is happening. And I'm just so excited that this discussion is taking place, that this is a way for us to grow our businesses and help us support our young people.

[01:30:54] I mean, I think the opportunity for them to be able to get jobs in these emerging areas is going to be so significant and important. And then I also want to say for those who have been left behind, for me personally, the point that Matt made about creating AI as a trade is really unique and important.

[01:31:16] And I would argue in my community, I've got so many residents who are struggling, struggling because they're in very low-paid jobs. If we can give them a pathway, and that's what we've been trying to do over the last three years, But AI is a platform that we can use to help them as well.

[01:31:36] So thinking through strategies that will allow them to sort of ladder up. You get into an entry-level position and you move up from there. So I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation and figuring out how we leverage all the people in this room. And then every single business person, the energy, the excitement, the suggestions and the ideas that were suggested here, so encouraging for us to step out and make this happen.

[01:32:04] We can do this in Fairfax County. We have been a leader in so many specific areas. We will now become the leader in AI, and I'm looking forward to seeing that happen. Thank you. - Thank you, Professor Lesk. I think you established very well our aspirational goals, and I think now how do we make it a reality, and that's part of what we discussed today.

[01:32:23] So look forward to further discussions. We are out of time, over time, but absolutely appreciate everybody being here today contributing to this process. This meeting is adjourned.

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