While it may seem like many Federal agencies are already using artificial intelligence, an official from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shared on Sept. 4 that the Federal government is really just in the beginning stages of deploying the emerging technology.
“I don’t think there’s as much AI really out and deployed in the Federal government as we think there is,” Dave Hinchman, the director of IT and cybersecurity at GAO, said at the Billington CyberSecurity Summit in Washington.
“It’s a very hot topic without a doubt, there are a lot of agencies who are looking at it right now. There’s a recognition that it’s coming, and it’s going to be part of government technology, but there’s isn’t that much out there right now,” he added.
Hinchman said that GAO plans to issue a new report next week that dives into the 150-day deadlines that came out of President Biden’s October 2023 AI executive order. Part of that to-do list for Federal agencies was for them to develop their AI inventories and use cases.
According to Hinchman, the report will provide a better look into the progress Federal agencies have made with AI, but he noted that it’s “probably an imperfect list.”
“One hundred and fifty days is not a lot of time for a huge, sprawling, federated agency to really get in and do it, but this is all part of the journey,” he said. “The Federal government really is just beginning the journey, and I think that there will be more, richer information that we’re going to learn over the next several years as we try to figure out how to integrate AI with government business processes, but I don’t know that we’re really there yet – as much as we think it is.”
In addition to the report, Hinchman said that he also has a team at GAO that is looking into the AI risk assessments that all the Sector Risk Management Agencies (SRMAs) were required to complete for each of their critical infrastructure sectors.
In doing that work, along with the report coming out next week, Hinchman emphasized that GAO is “learning that the government is just now beginning its AI journey as a whole.”
“There’s a lot that the government is still struggling to understand. There aren’t a lot of policies in place. There aren’t a lot of frameworks and structure around that,” he said. “And so, I think that over the next several years, as AI becomes more commonplace, as agencies start to figure out what they’re going to do with it, I think we’re going to really start to see some interesting things – both in terms of the threats that agencies face, as well as the infrastructure sectors, but also the powerful tools that AI can be used for in terms of fighting those threats.”
In terms of specific policy from Congress, Hinchman said that a lot of the AI legislation introduced in recent months “will not see the light of day.” However, he did say that he is interested to see if any AI legislation will be attached to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which he said “is traditionally a vehicle in which smaller pieces of technology-based legislation get passed.”
“I think that’s going to be an interesting bill to see what Congress’s real taste for tackling AI issues is going to be. I think that there’s a lot of learning still happening, which is why we’re doing the work we’re doing,” he said.
Hinchman added that the coming congressional election will also “dictate the pace of what happens this fall, as well as what will happen in the new year.”
“I think that over time, either bad things will happen with AI – which often is a very, very strong generator of congressional action – or there will be a greater sense that we need to do something,” he concluded.
