The era of artificial intelligence is here. As thought leaders debate its benefits, drawbacks and possible legislation, Idaho state representative Jordan Redman is exploring the uses of the technology from a leadership and legislative perspective.  

Redman says A.I has been extremely helpful, calling it a “gamechanger.”  

“I am always looking for tools to hack my day and figure out ways to be more productive,” he said. “It probably freed up 5 hours a day.” 

Over the past year, Redman’s interest in A.I. has grown significantly. With his interest piqued, Redman commissioned the creation of an agentive A.I. named “Jarvis,” named after the A.I. from Disney’s “Iron Man” films. 

An agentive A.I. is an A.I. that can function without the need for human intervention. During its initial design an agentive A.I. is given a set of goals or directives from which it makes its decisions. It can complete tasks or arrive at conclusions without the need for human input in its everyday operations.  

Redman says that, as a state representative, access to knowledge and the ability to make quick and accurate decisions is “important.” 

Research, studies, papers, rules and practices from other states all need to be accessed and studied quickly, and well. Something that Jarvis excels at. 

“I have Jarvis work with [ChatGPT], Grok, Claude,” he said. “He works with all of the different platforms and pulls all the different data from each of those to give me a really good work product.”

Even though he is exploring the technology, Redman, while impressed with A.I.’s capabilities, still believes that humans have to be involved. 

“I think you’ll always still need the human element,” he said. “We still have people on our team that have specific things that only humans can make decisions on.”

He does believe that A.I. has increased his and his team’s efficiency “exponentially” and that A.I. is “amplifying the human element” of their work. 

Redman thinks that resistance towards learning the technology comes from “fear of the unknown.” 

“Even I was a skeptic early on,” he said. “As I have learned more and dealt with it more, I can see that it’s a tool and just a tool 

Redman compared resisting using A.I. as a tool, to using a rock instead of a hammer to pound in a nail. He said that he believes that more people are becoming aware of this and called the A.I. boom “like an industrial revolution.” 

His and his team’s study into the uses for A.I. come from wanting to stay ahead of the curve. 

“We are going to try to understand it and try to utilize it because otherwise then we will be left behind,” he said.   

Part of understanding a technology is advocating for its benefits, while also realizing its drawbacks. 

Redman believes it would be naive to let A.I. become sole decision makers or leaders during the current era of growth. He and his team make sure that A.I. is not making decisions but rather giving them options. 

“There is no decision making,” he said. “We lay out the options and then the human will make that decision.” 

Redman believes that double checking and verifying the work of A.I. is also important. He said that “bad data in, bad data out” and that the work before and after A.I. use is what sharpens a final work product. 

“If you’re not doing your research and following up and verifying that stuff, you could have a bad work product,” he said. “That is, I think something on all of our minds, to make sure we are doing data checking afterwards to make sure that the information we have and that we are working off of is accurate.”

Redman is very aware of what an A.I. cannot do. Emotional navigation, cultural decisions and teamwork all require the handling of a human. He said that the impact of what an individual can bring to a group or how they affect culture are important to a well-functioning team.       

“I think, today, where it’s at, great research tool, helps speed up processes, should not be making those high-level decisions,” he said. 

Redman understands that humans and individuals are still significant to the task completion process, but that his team is interested in a good final product, and if certain tools can get them there, then they are going to use them.

“We still understand that the human element is very important, we just want to use all of the tools at our disposal to make sure we are creating the best product we can,” he said.