5 ways the US Government is investing in AI
With Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 Presidential Election, it’s clear that the economy and tech innovation will be two priorities for the next four years.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will form a huge part of how various Government departments operate. With Elon Musk tasked with leading the new Department of Government Efficiency, he’ll undoubtedly be making AI a key focal point of future infrastructural decisions.
Here, we explore five ways the US Government is already investing in AI:
- The military – With international politics at its most fragmented in decades, US strategic competitors such as China and Russia are making momentous investments in AI for national security purposes. This is the same at the Department of Defence, which is investing billions of dollars to develop and integrate AI into its systems. This is ranging from automating simple tasks such as processing data, to software that is helping on the battlefield through complex analysis that is helping to predict mechanical failures.
- Law enforcement– Facial recognition technology powered by AI is being leveraged by law enforcement agencies to help identify suspects from footage. As a result, it’s enabling officers to apprehend suspects much quicker than they were before and has helped to massively reduce false positive/negative identifications. Moreover, AI language processing software is enabling officers to quickly process large amounts of text-based evidence such as witness statements.
- Healthcare – The prediction and treatment of cancers has hugely improved thanks to AI. The software is helping to spot the various forms of the disease in its early stages more accurately. Furthermore, research shows that a high proportion of breast screenings show incorrect results. AI is addressing this by enabling the review and translation of mammograms 30 times faster with what is claimed to be 99% accuracy, reducing the need for unnecessary biopsies. As well as this, AI is giving radiologists the ability to see higher-level images, with AI essentially acting as a second set of eyes.
- Cybersecurity – This has become one of the key issues of our age, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has developed a long-term roadmap for AI to ‘promote the beneficial uses of AI to enhance cybersecurity capabilities, ensure AI systems are protected from cyber-based threats, and deter the malicious use of AI capabilities to threaten the critical infrastructure Americans rely on every day.’
The roadmap is going through what the CISA calls five lines of effort: Responsibly using AI to support its mission; Assuring AI systems; Protecting critical infrastructure from malicious use of AI; Collaborating and communicating on key AI efforts with the interagency, international partners, and the public; and Expanding AI expertise in its workforce. - Transportation – The US Department of Transportation is applying AI software to make transportation more efficient, with predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms being implemented across air travel, automobiles, and railroads, and maritime vessels. For example, authorities can now harvest large amounts of data in an efficient way to better understand traffic patterns and predict future events like traffic jams or delays on public transit lines.
