The Department of Homeland Security has seen firsthand the opportunities and threats of artificial intelligence. He found a trafficking victim years later using an AI tool that created a picture of a child a decade older. But it has also been tricked into investigations by deep fake images created by AI.
Now, the department is becoming the first federal agency to adopt technology that plans to incorporate a wide range of creative AI models. In partnership with OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, it will launch pilot programs using chatbots and other tools to help fight drug and human trafficking crimes, train immigration officials and manage emergencies across the country. can be prepared.
The rush to develop the as-yet-unproven technology is part of a larger scramble to keep up with the changes brought about by creative AI, which can create highly realistic images and videos and mimic human speech. .
“No one can ignore it,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Meyerkas said in an interview. “And if someone isn’t prepared to recognize and deal with its potential for good and harm, it will be too late and that’s why we’re moving fast.”
The plan to incorporate generative AI across the agency is the latest demonstration of how new technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are forcing even the most staid industries to re-evaluate the way they operate. Still, government agencies like DHS may face some of the harshest scrutiny over how they use the technology, which has sparked heated debate because it has sometimes been shown to be unreliable and discriminatory.
Those within the federal government have rushed to make plans after President Biden issued an executive order late last year that mandated the creation of safety standards for AI and its adoption across the federal government.
DHS, which employs 260,000 people, was created after the September 11 terrorist attacks and is charged with protecting Americans within the nation’s borders, including policing human and drug trafficking, These include critical infrastructure protection, disaster response and border patrol.
As part of his plan, The agency plans to hire 50 AI experts to protect the country’s critical infrastructure from AI-powered attacks and counter the use of the technology to create child sexual exploitation material and biological weapons. Work out a solution for
In pilot programs, on which it will spend $5 million, the agency will use AI models such as ChatGPT to help investigate child abuse material, human and drug trafficking. It will also work with companies to search their text-based data to find patterns to help investigators. For example, a detective looking for a suspect driving a blue pickup truck will be able to search for the same type of vehicle in a Homeland Security investigation for the first time.
DHS will use chatbots to train immigration officials who have worked with refugees and asylum seekers, along with other employees and contractors. AI tools will enable officials to further train with mock interviews. The chatbots will also gather information about communities across the country to help them create disaster relief plans.
Eric Hyson, the department’s chief information officer and head of AI, said the agency will report the results of its pilot programs by the end of the year.
The agency chose OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta to experiment with a range of tools and will use cloud providers Microsoft, Google and Amazon in its pilot programs. “We cannot do it alone,” he said. “We need to work with the private sector to help define what constitutes responsible use of creative AI.”