With the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Sherburne County has instituted a policy to guide how county employees, volunteers and contractors use it safely and responsibly.

During their last meeting, the Sherburne County Commissioners voted unanimously to adopt a policy on how to use publicly available AI- enhanced services such as Bing, Bard, and ChatGPT. The goal is to use the tool responsibly in a manner that adheres to legal and regulatory requirements, balances confidence and skepticism, delivers value and benefits to Sherburne County citizens and secures protected information and data.

AI refers to the simulated human intelligence process utilized by computer systems to simulate natural languages, pattern recognition, decision-making and other types of interpretation of complex data.

Although publicly available AI services can be helpful and enhance an employee’s tasks, AI is not always 100% accurate and sometimes its use poses security risks.

When employees insert data into an AI service, the data is collected by and retained by the service. That may pose security and privacy risks as AI incorporates and does not protect submitted data. The data becomes publicly available for anyone’s use.

Under the newly established policy, county employees must obtain approval from the department head before accessing any AI service.

County employees may only use AI services with data classified as public. Data that is highly sensitive or protected such as Criminal Justice Information (CJI), financial data (bank accounts numbers, credit card numbers, Federal Tax Information), Government issued ID numbers (Driver’s License, Passports, Social Security number, State ID cards), and Protected Health Information (PHI) can not be used with an AI service.

Department heads will ensure that AI-enhanced services will be used to enhance human performance and  not replace it. They will also ensure the use agreement has been reached between the county and any vendor of AI-services before an employee’s use of the service. Department heads will also ensure that any contractor accessing an AI service does so in accordance with county policy.

All county employees will receive annual training on the proper use of AI services.

The policy was reviewed  by the Department Head Committee and the County Attorney’s Office as to its form.

“We put this policy together because within the organization and within government, we’re seeing an increasing request and interest in the use of generative and artificial intelligence in doing our line of business,” said Sherburne County IT Director Brian Kamman.