One of the challenges that Federal agencies need to address when developing and deploying AI technologies is figuring out exactly what effects they are looking to achieve and then zeroing in on discrete solutions for those, a Treasury Department official said at the ServiceNow Federal Forum in National Harbor, Md., on March 21.
Brian Peretti, deputy chief artificial intelligence officer and director of domestic and international cybersecurity policy at the Treasury Department’s Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection, counseled agencies to avoid “boiling the ocean” when they are creating AI-driven solutions.
“I think the challenge is really to understand in a really nuanced way what problem you’re trying to solve for, and then being able to build the AI platform and strategy around that,” said Peretti.
“A lot of times I’m trying to boil the ocean and you try to create something that’s going to solve all the world’s problems. It’s probably not going to work,” he said.
To help government do a better job at developing AI-driven tools, Peretti advocated creating easy channels of communication with private sector firms who can provide help in deploying the technologies.
“If we all try to develop this all on our own [it’s] not going to be helpful,” Peretti said.
“What we’re going to do is engage in a public-private partner dialogue to start talking about how can firms in the financial sector or other places really start to create vectors to share,” the Treasury official said.
To illustrate that spirit of cooperation, Peretti talked about the Treasury Department’s signing earlier this week of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Finland’s Ministry of Finance to facilitate the exchange of cybersecurity information.
“We released an MOU between us and Finland to increase information sharing,” he said. “What we’ve been trying to do is figure out how we get more of the information into the hands of civil defenders … to be able to make sure that you have what you need to be able to do what your job is more efficiently and effectively,” Peretti said.
