RAPID CITY, SD – The City of Rapid City’s eight-month old Artificial Intelligence Task Force was tasked Monday night with bringing a more comprehensive AI policy to the council for consideration.

During the regular council meeting Monday night, council members considered an AI policy presented by the city’s Director of Information Technology Jim Gilbert but rejected it, passing instead a motion asking staff to bring a more comprehensive version for consideration.

“They want to see the end product a little more,” Gilbert said. “A lot of times you separate your procedure from your policy and that’s what we were doing – but it sounds like they want to see the procedure too.”

As proposed, the Artificial Intelligence Policy brought to the council was designed to establish a framework for the City’s use of AI tools to support, and optimize, the work of City staff in performing their duties more efficiently, consistently, and effectively.

“The policy is set up to… be the guideposts, and then the actual work of the task force for the day-to-day work is going to be released as a toolkit, which is very close to being released now, which has the more specifics in it,” Gilbert said.

The policy creates guardrails to protect City data, confidential information, cybersecurity, privacy, and public records obligations, and it reinforces that AI tools may not be used as a substitute for employee expertise or final decision-making.

The intent of the policy was to help employees improve productivity, streamline routine tasks, support analysis, enhance communication, and strengthen service delivery while maintaining human judgment, accountability, and oversight through all City operations.

The city policy presented to the council stipulates the AI supports but doesn’t replace human judgment and city employees remain fully responsible and accountable for all AI-assisted work products, decisions, and communications. The City, as written in the policy, is responsible for all outcomes resulting from AI use.

“There’s a note about human oversight. There’s a note that we will be accountable on all this information, but there’s some notes about being accountable for AI-assisted work products, decisions, and communications,” Council member Callie Meyer said. “I just want to say point blank, I would find it alarming to outsource decision-making to AI”

To protect privacy and security, the policy allows for City designated AI tools, use of the technology outside of those approved would be off limits.

“Sensitive, confidential, or restricted data must be protected at all times, the policy states, AI tools must be used in a manner that safeguards City data and complies with all applicable privacy, security, and records retention requirements. Employees should assume that information entered into AI tools may be retained, disclosed, or become subject to public records requests.”