Responsible ways to use AI for government efficiency

Marketplace Tech

American Public Media

Technology, News

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that representatives of DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency — gained access to sensitive data at the Department of Education and fed it into AI software. This has raised red flags over whether it violates federal privacy law. We reached out to DOGE for comment, but didn’t hear back. But there are ways to use AI to improve efficiency without raising privacy concerns. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Kevin Frazier, contributing editor at the publication Lawfare, about how the government has used AI in the past and how it could use it more responsibly in the future.

Transcript

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0:00.0	How to Use AI in Government Responsibly.
0:04.5	From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.
0:07.4	I'm Stephanie Hughes.
0:17.4	The Washington Post reported earlier this month that representatives of Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency,
0:24.4	gained access to sensitive data at the U.S. Department of Education and fed it into AI software.
0:30.6	This has raised red flags over whether it violates federal privacy law.
0:35.3	We reached out to Doge for comment, but didn't hear back.
0:38.9	Meanwhile, Kevin Frazier, with the publication lawfare, says the government has used AI in the
0:44.2	past and could use it responsibly in the future. The federal government's use of AI really spans
0:50.7	decades, if we're going to be honest, because how you define AI is a whole
0:55.3	another hour-long conversation, if not two-hour-long conversation. But here, we can even just
1:00.6	look back to the end of 2024 when we had an inventory done of the federal government's use
1:06.9	cases of AI. And what we saw is that across 37 agencies, there were more than 1,700
1:14.1	different uses of AI, ranging from the Army Corps of Engineers using AI to predict flooding,
1:21.6	to, of course, the Department of Defense using AI to bolster its cybersecurity defenses.
1:27.3	Tell me a little bit more about, you know, what the goal is with Incorporated. using AI to bolster its cybersecurity defenses.
1:32.9	Tell me a little bit more about, you know, what the goal is with incorporating AI into the federal government. Like, what's the hope? Yeah, so there are tons of hopes. I think the biggest
1:37.9	advantage to relying on AI systems are a couple things. So number one, AI is really adept at spotting patterns that would
1:46.6	otherwise allude human staffers. And so AI deployed in the federal government setting can
1:54.8	really assist with efficiency when it comes to identifying waste, trying to forecast new trends, whether those are market
2:03.4	trends or weather trends. So a lot of this just goes to trying to do really large, difficult
2:09.6	tasks in a more streamlined and reliable fashion. One thing I want to point out is that AI operates the same way in any given context.
	...

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