Douglas County, Wis., Adopts AI Policy for Officials, Staff

(TNS) — Officials are embracing the artificial intelligence wave in county government.The Douglas County Board adopted a new policy Aug. 20 to guide responsible generative AI use for all appointed and elected officials and employees.Supervisor Anders Hultstrom cautioned against adopting the policy.

"The one thing that I would say just as a general caution to my fellow members is that generative AI and large learning language models are not perfect tools," he said. "They're very prone to mistakes and sometimes outright fabrication. And I think it's something that we should consider very cautiously."Hultstrom said summarizing, analyzing and synthesizing information are skills that require nuance, and research without human context can lead people astray.Administrator Dave Sletten said the goal of the policy isn't to replace human judgment or control; it would be used to augment ideas and provide insight to streamline some of the workload to provide efficiencies.

"We need to have some parameters to control artificial intelligence use," he said.A policy adopted by Bayfield County a few years ago served as the model as Douglas County worked with the city of Superior and University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension to develop Douglas County's policy, Sletten said."There are risks with using artificial intelligence, and our goal is to at least conform some structure where we're able to use artificial intelligence in a safe and practical manner in our host environment," Sletten said.Under the policy, county officials who use AI are responsible for addressing security, privacy and accuracy to ensure the use of the technology is lawful, safe and legitimate. Employees are expected to undergo training in both artificial intelligence and cybersecurity and can use only AI tools licensed by the county.AI users are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the work and must cite the use of artificial intelligence in producing it.The policy prohibits the use of AI tools when dealing with sensitive or confidential information."Artificial intelligence is continuing to evolve by the moment, so it is very possible that there will be ... changes updated with this policy," Sletten said.Some county staff have already undergone training to use artificial intelligence."I was at the training, and it scared me even more than when I went in there," Chairman Mark Liebaert said. He said it concerned him when six or eight different people asked the same question and got different answers from AI."But I recognized that we don't have a policy, so this is a good start, I think, for us to get a handle on where we need to be on that," Liebaert said. "And I don't doubt one bit that we'll be adjusting this policy within the year."Dan Lindberg, the county's information technology director, said there is a heavy emphasis on personal responsibility within the policy."As a county, we want to be able to offer guidance, training, education in terms of AI usage, some of the dangers out there," Lindberg said. "And I think to do that ... you have to have a policy to back it."©2026 the Superior Telegram, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.