The government will need to overcome a number of ethical and technical challenges as it adopts more artificial intelligence tools, and its success will hinge largely on building a workforce that can grapple with the tech, according to a recent report.
Algorithmic bias, security and explainability are among the top issues that agencies, and society more broadly, must address as they lean more heavily on AI to accomplish their work, the Partnership for Public Service said in a report published Thursday. Federal leaders have long seen AI as a way to derive better insights from government data and relieve employees from tedious tasks, but unless critical challenges are addressed, the tech could do more harm than good, according to the report.
The report, drafted by both the Partnership and IBM, lays out the primary issues facing the government as it adopts AI and offers potential solutions. It builds on a previous report that examined the tech’s potential impact on government. In the coming years, researchers found estimated 130,000 feds could see their jobs affected by AI.
As the government turns to AI to make more consequential decisions, it will be critical to ensure the systems’ results are free from bias, researchers said, and the government should create a framework for assessing the fairness of different tools. Similarly, agencies will need to address issues around AI transparency and explainability so they can understand how algorithms arrive at their conclusions. Today, explainable AI is agencies savvy address challenges
