How Colorado is making its own rules for AI

David Edinger, Colorado's chief information officer, met with Colorado Gov Jared Polis (D) in 2024, and Gov Polis told him to embrace AI in state government. "I said, 'We've seen a few missteps from certain cities and states around the country. How do you feel about an approach that's more along the lines of bullish with guardrails?'" Edinger said. He told Gov Polis: "So we'll sort of take an aggressive approach, but we will evaluate things along the way so we don't make a silly misstep." Edinger said he and state colleagues created a framework for AI use with the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, taking into account needs of different state agencies. Colorado ended up backing out of some agreements with AI firms because of their data sharing policies that may have required sharing personally identifiable information, which would have possibly run afoul of Colorado's laws.