Study committee authorizes use of artificial intelligence to analyze Old Town Hall options

The Town of Hampden Old Town Townhouse Study Committee voted to authorize the subcommittee to use artificial intelligence tools to help analyze options for the vacant Old Town Hall and prepare recommendations for the select board. The vote was taken by voice and recorded as 'Aye.' The committee did not record individual named votes.

Presenter (speaker 4) moved that the subcommittee “use artificial intelligence as a tool to accelerate and facilitate our recommendation to the select board,” and a committee member seconded the motion. The presenter described a short demonstration and said town documents (the master plan, an engineering assessment and a binder of background materials) had been loaded into an AI notebook to produce a concise set of options.

Committee members repeatedly emphasized that the AI would be advisory only. As one committee member put it, the AI will be “the ninth nonvoting” member, providing focused options while final decisions remain with elected officials and the town voters. Staff described technical approaches for sharing documents (a shared Google notebook and a ChatGPT Pro project) and noted open-meeting and legal considerations would be followed when sharing records.

The motion authorized the subcommittee to continue building the shared dataset, run analytical prompts, and return findings and recommended options to the select board within the committee's timeframe. Committee members set an approximate internal timeline (about eight weeks) to prepare materials for public presentation in May.

Next steps include sharing the AI project with committee members, layering additional documents into the knowledge base, and scheduling follow-up meetings so the subcommittee can present its findings to the select board.