AI Frontier Institute

Relating To Artificial Intelligence.

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Hawaii H.B. 2591 (33rd Legislature, 2026) directs the State's Chief Data Officer (CDO) to enhance the open data portal at data.hawaii.gov into a 'Comprehensive Hawaii Data Hub' by developing an AI chatbot in phases (Section 1, new §27-___). The chatbot must support both English and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, include source links and AI-generated-content disclaimers, offer human escalation, and be prohibited from providing legal or medical advice. The CDO must publish transparency information and conduct yearly audits. Rules under Chapter 91 must address security standards aligned with NIST SP 800-53, privacy protections (including a ban on training models on user prompts), data retention limits, and government-records classification. A second new section (§27-___) requires the CDO to develop a procurement evaluation system for AI governance tools and a reporting mechanism for state agencies' AI use cases and vendors. Section 2 amends §27-44 to formally add the AI chatbot development and the data task force's role in assisting that development to the CDO's statutory duties. Section 3 appropriates $2,000,000 from general revenues for fiscal year 2026–2027 to fund chatbot development, AI governance tools, one AI engineer position (1.0 FTE), one AI scientist position (1.0 FTE), and improvements to the open data portal. The Act takes effect July 1, 2026 (Section 5).

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