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DOA outlines cautious AI rollout; says current tools won’t affect Alaska energy footprint
Summary
State CIO told senators the Office of Information Technology will use established external large language models with controlled state data, monitor outcomes, and that the near-term AI tools DOA plans to use are hosted in lower‑48 data centers and pose no direct energy impact to Alaska communities.
Bill Smith, chief information officer for the State of Alaska and director of the Office of Information Technology, told the Senate Finance Subcommittee on March 17 the department is taking a conservative, data‑centric approach to adopting artificial intelligence tools.
“We are taking well tested and common large language models from the providers that have a good amount of transparency about the rigor that they put into their testing. And then we're exposing it to our state data, which we're very familiar with and which we can control it to a very granular level,” Smith said. He said the state will monitor datasets and outcomes and rely on state employees to oversee AI‑produced results.
On concerns about AI energy use and data‑center expansions, Smith said none of the tools the state expects to use in the near term will increase energy or resource impacts in Alaska: the services are run in data centers in the lower 48 and account for an extremely small percentage of activity in those centers. He added that large, specialized data centers built to train new AI models are multi‑year, provider‑led projects that would undergo regulatory review and are not currently anticipated in Alaska.
Senators raised legal and intellectual‑property concerns about generative AI and asked about the state's need for legislation or additional staff. Smith said the state is not developing new LLMs and is instead controlling access and data exposure; he also said the state is building experience incrementally and will identify internal positions as needs become clearer.
No legislative proposals were made at the hearing; members asked DOA to continue monitoring vendor practices, data governance and legal exposure as AI use expands.
