A new artificial intelligence policy is now in place for all Eagle Mountain City employees. Approved Monday by the City Council, the policy requires employees to take precautions before using AI in order to protect sensitive information.

The new policy states, “Employees or technology designees are responsible for evaluating the security of any Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool before using it.”

Evan Berrett, economic development director for Eagle Mountain City, said the policy covers three different categories: cyber security, data privacy and the overall protection of the city’s workforce. He explained each of these sections are protected by the policy through proactive measures.

According to Berrett, the policy is not meant to be restrictive of employees using AI. Rather, it provides precautions to ensure security and also assures employees that “we’re not looking for opportunities to get rid of them,” he said.

Specific AI tools are not restricted through the policy. It gives employees steps to follow such as reading through the fine print to see what data is being collected and verifying sources. The employees are not expected to do this alone, Berrett assured.

“They’re going to be given the tools, the connections they need within the city and out of the city to be able to go seek expert help through our IT staff, through third parties, whatever they need to so that they can get through all that and be able to make a good judgment call at that point with all the expert opinion they need,” he said, adding that a supervisor then makes the final call on what AI will be used and how it will be used.

The reason this type of preventative rather than restrictive policy is in place, Berrett said, is because, “While we’re trying to explore the benefits of AI, we want to make sure that we’re exploring the benefits of AI within certain bounds. Within the bounds of security, data privacy, ensuring that we’re just being wise about this, knowing that AI is still evolving and that there’s still a lot that we have to learn about its capabilities, but then again, its risks.”

The premise behind the policy, Eagle Mountain City Council member Donna Burnham said, “was to make sure that we are being careful with people’s data. As a city, we just have to be cautious.”

Berrett said the city is trying to be mindful of the risks that AI could have on things such as cybersecurity.

“Because AI is kind of like where the internet was years ago, there’s just a lot of things that are kind of unknown,” he said. “We’re not really sure what its potential could be and whatnot. We just want to be very cognizant of the potential risks of exposing our city to any sort of cybersecurity risks.”

According to Berrett, the city receives information and data that helps staff make decisions, and they handle a large amount of sensitive information. The precautions this policy provides, he said, will help ensure the data and information going in and out of the city remains in the city’s control, while also ensuring information is validated and before making strategic decisions based on the data.

Another part of the AI policy focuses on the balance of keeping city staff employed and also taking advantage of AI’s many uses. Said Berrett, it will help prevent people from simply losing their jobs to AI by setting up checks that are required before replacing a job with AI.

“As a local government, we’re under a lot of pressure to make sure that we’re using taxpayer money as efficiently as possible, and AI is kind of a unique opportunity to be more efficient,” he said. “But at the same time, there are people with families who are obviously not going to want to lose their jobs. We’re not going to keep someone just for the sake of keeping someone. But at the same time, let’s give them a chance to pivot as needed or whatnot, as things change and evolve over time.”

The way the policy gives employees a chance to pivot as AI evolves is by requiring supervisors to do two things when they determine that a task can be performed by AI. First, they must evaluate the impact the change will have on the employee. Second, they must work with human resources to determine the next steps for the employee — possibly retraining the employee to be utilized in another capacity or finding where elsewhere their expertise could be maximized.

This policy came about through an assignment given to Brigham Lee, a graduate student at Brigham Young University who works as a full-time summer management intern for Eagle Mountain City. The assignment was to look at the benefits and risks of AI, and as he began exploring, he found many risks associated with AI.

“We realized pretty quickly that we were going to need some sort of a policy,” Berrett said, explaining that he felt the immediate need was to create a policy before continuing with exploring the different uses of AI within city jobs.

The full policy can be found at https://bit.ly/3Olur1N.