When is San Antonio in the same sentence as cities like San Francisco, Tokyo, Madrid, London and Nairobi?
That’s what happened last week when Bloomberg Philanthropies announced Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones as a member of its new Mayors AI Forum, an international group of city leaders focused on artificial intelligence and community needs and resilience.
Jones will sit down with the mayors of nine other cities — the aforementioned ones plus Bogota, Kyiv, Buenos Aires and Boston — to provide input on the adoption of AI in major cities.
Artificial intelligence is any computer system, software or process that can emulate aspects of human work and cognition. It’s a broad term that applies to a diversity of systems and programs, often built off of large datasets. Adoption of AI models like ChatGPT or Claude has become more common in both the public and private sectors.
The San Antonio Report interviewed Jones about the new appointment and why she’s focused on AI when it comes to local workforce and economics. She also chairs the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Technology and Innovation Committee.
This article has been edited for clarity and length.
How did San Antonio join the Bloomberg cohort?
I was talking a little bit about the Economic Security Advisory Group and then some of the things that I would like to focus on with the tech and innovation committee, as well as some of the things that I know we need to do here …
For example, the importance of a digital twin, … essentially your model for the city above ground and below ground. That is a really useful tool, especially for us as we own both of our utilities. You can see how a digital twin that helps us understand how to better plan and maybe do a better job of predictive maintenance, predictive replacement timelines, so that we can budget for those accordingly [is helpful].
Also, being thoughtful about how those tools can help us address some of the inequities in our community. There’s value in utilizing as many tools as we can to help us make data-informed decisions and plan for the city, as well as making sure that we’re being thoughtful about these data sets.
I was having that conversation, just kind of giving them a rundown of how I’m thinking in general about AI and technology, but also using those things to help us make better decisions at the city.
That’s when they then shared, ‘Well, you know, Mayor (Mike) Bloomberg is really wanting to make sure that mayors are supported in this area, and are bringing their experiences at the ground level to how the business community is thinking about this, as well as how legislators are thinking about this.’
I’m thankful that they’re bringing us together. There’s 10 of us. There’s only three from the U.S. It’s great to be in a cohort with those cities as well as seven other, you know, very, very large global cities — Nairobi, Madrid, London, etc. So I think it’d be a really good discussion and I’m thankful that I was able to get San Antonio in the room.
What does being in these rooms mean for folks in San Antonio?
When I am engaging with these companies I’m talking about what we’re dealing with in San Antonio. The fact that we are the third-most impoverished city, the fact that this is Military City, USA. Those corporations, as they’re thinking about identifying various partners, San Antonio is part of that.
A lot of what I’m doing is helping people learn more about the city. They know about the Spurs, and that’s great, but they don’t know that we also have the second largest cyber presence…
It’s an opportunity for me to kind of highlight the things that are top of mind for the city, but also talk about why we’d be a great place for them to do business. We own both utilities. Think about the quality of cost of living, the cost of doing business. It’s another forum in which we can talk about why folks should be thinking about doing business in San Antonio.
I think folks also appreciate my personal background in national security and then making the connections with, and addressing some of the inequities. How can we be thoughtful about addressing the inequities in our community, using technology to do some of those things as we are trying to kind of navigate, unfortunately, through some of these budget challenges?
There’s a lot of uncertainty and concern about the future of artificial intelligence. Do you think people should be concerned?
If you watched it, the [City Council A] Session, I pulled the item for Ready To Work, I was very clear in my feedback. They need to be much more aggressive in how they are contemplating the impacts of AI and the choices that we have available for that program. When that program started a couple years ago, AI was not nearly top of the conversation the way it is now. For there still to be career options on there, training options, rather, that are like billing clerk … when there’s lots of examples already today, of AI replacing those jobs. That is going to move faster than we are prepared.
I really wanted to, in reviewing the Ready to Work budget, make sure that group was being thoughtful. As AI-proof as we can make the careers that they have an option to select from, is what we need to do with the limited amount of resources to ensure we’re not setting people up for failure.
I provided this feedback, and I’m thankful that they are acting upon it, which is a better connection with the trades. How can we better articulate the benefits of those career fields to young people in our community? Electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, those are good paying jobs and you’re not going to AI your way out of those jobs anytime soon.
Are there other ways you want to prepare San Antonio’s workforce, both when it comes to protecting jobs and bringing in higher wage jobs?
There’s a critical role here to play with the community college district and the [$987 million] bond that was just passed. A lot of that has to do with, certainly on the cyber side, but also on the manufacturing side.
The types of programs that we’re investing in need to be informed by how quickly the advances are being made there. AI is going to make things easier to do. What it does require, though, is that we have people that are able to think more critically about the information that has been presented to them.
The highest ROI for our investment in people is always when they’re younger. And so as much as we can strengthen the foundation of our young people, which allows for them to be more critical thinkers over the long-term, I think is the best use of those resources.
Where does our dollar literally go the furthest? Does it go the furthest in the Ready to Work Program, or does it go toward expanding, for example, Pre-K 4 SA and meeting more of that need?
In the press release about the mayor’s AI forum, you mentioned these cities coming together as AI hubs. What does it mean to be an AI hub? And are we there yet?
We’ve got an interesting ecosystem. We can strengthen it, and that’s why I’d ask the ESAG to be thoughtful about how we do that. There are some connections, not only with AI, but also with quantum computing, communications as well as sensing, biotechnology and space manufacturing.
I don’t think of AI as just one thing. We’ve got many advantages, of which the AI is one piece. We’ve got a really strong pipeline. That’s also something I highlighted when I was in Taiwan leading that delegation, talking about the pipeline that we have here with the center at UT San Antonio, and reminding people that Texas Cyber Command is based right here in San Antonio.
It’s not an accident, just by the sheer number of cyber security professionals we have in our community. We strengthen that by looking at ways that we can make connections across those four sectors.
San Antonio has attracted low-wage jobs in several industries. When it comes to AI, is it possible for San Antonio to escape that?
Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t have set up the ESAG. Just the other week, I toured Darkhive. They’re a drone company. They just had a major contract with the Army, and frankly from my time as the Undersecretary [of the Air Force], I know that is the future of warfare.
The fact that we’ve got a local company that is headquartered here, that is competing at that level, is a big deal. Of course … you actually have to make the drones.
There are some opportunities for us to be thoughtful about the ways in which AI is going to help us address the issue that you just mentioned, as it relates to some of the manufacturing jobs. Not everybody is going to be a coder, right? You still need, for example, all the other trades that are going to help enable advancements.
How does the city prepare in its internal operations for artificial intelligence?
There’s absolutely ways in which AI can help us be more efficient. A perfect example, we were just talking about all these fines that go back 20-some years. … Because it’s like $80 million [in fines] that’s outstanding.
If we’re already able to make decisions and be clear about what’s actually in the realm of recouping versus what needs to potentially be written off because that person, for example, no longer has that vehicle, then we can spend our time in other ways and be more focused on recouping what is more likely.
I think there’s a way in which we can also help people with, potentially, the permitting process. There have been a couple of case studies in other cities about how AI has helped people better navigate that and make that more streamlined. There’s a number of ways that we can be more thoughtful about employing that technology.
When I think of all these things, I think about what are the ways in which AI can help us better see ourselves? We’re seeing these major federal cuts come into play, whether that be to Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP or SNAP under the One Big Beautiful Bill.
We did the tabletop exercise in December where I asked the staff, ‘hey, help me understand, if we lost half of our funding for public health and or half of our funding for affordable housing at the federal level, what would that mean for our community?’
We went through that. We heard from stakeholders. They identified the risks, and as a result of that, we now have an idea of what we need to be concerned about if we see any of those cuts come to fruition.
We need to have a better idea of the data that is out there so that we can understand who may be impacted by these. How we use technology to better understand that so we can more quickly adapt to the impacts of these cuts?
How are national security and military operations utilizing artificial intelligence? And what do you think of the way the technology is being adopted at the Pentagon?
When I left, there was a major focus on minimizing risk to the individual, as well as quickly getting an understanding of what’s going on and who needs to take action.
You have this, it’s not just one drone, you’d call it like a family of drones, with one quarterbacking. Then you have subsets of drones underneath that, all to make sure that you are acting as quickly as possible and can relay important information to whoever it needs to get to. AI plays a key part of that.
As you’re thinking about what may happen in the Indo-Pacific, for example, that is a conflict unlike anything we have seen since World War II. That is going to be in a domain, in several domains, that we were not previously in. When you think, of course, of space.
That’s probably where I’m going to leave that, but at the end of the day, it’s about who can get the information the quickest, who can make the fastest decision and who can execute the quickest. AI enables that. And I’m sure you’ll continue to hear more about that.
