(Radio Iowa) – Pottawattamie County officials are setting guardrails around how county employees should utilize artificial intelligence, particularly when handling sensitive information. David Bayer, the county’s chief information officer, says the discussions about a county policy on A-I use by employees started last year. “AI is definitely influencing what we read and see every day,” Bayer said. “…It’s everywhere.” All county employees will have to complete in-person and online training on how to comply with the new policy.
“Not just the training on the policy, but also training on how to use AI, what to look for…how do I report or document that I’m using it. All those things will be part of that training,” Bayer says. The Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors approved the A-I policy this week. It addresses the kind of A-I county employees would use.
“Tier one would be basic use of AI, so ‘glorified Google search’ kind of stuff where there is no sensitive data and unlicensed AI usage,” said Bayer.
“Tier two would be county-licensed AI, meaning we have the licenses and we dole those out as needed to put into more advanced tasks. Then, tier three would be very controlled AI doing highly analytic internal things with sensitive data.” Bayer says employees should generally avoid putting sensitive data, such as criminal justice information, Social Security numbers, names, addresses, and phone numbers, into programs such as Chat G-P-T.
Bayer says they’re creating a system so county employees may notify his department if they believe A-I is being misused within county offices. “There’s not going to be a lot of monitoring, other than we’re going to have to rely on each another to know when someone’s misusing it,” Bayer said. Bayer says the county’s A-I committee is also starting to identify ways A-I could be used to make county operations more efficient.
