Issue Summary
Artificial intelligence (AI) has created excitement because of its potential. For instance, AI can help diagnose medical conditions, forecast natural disasters, and protect national security. However, there are also significant concerns, including intellectual property rights, built-in bias, and effects on humans and the environment.
As federal agencies’ use of generative AI grows rapidly, federal oversight of AI technologies needs to evolve. GAO’s May 2023 testimony described how GAO uses AI and how federal agencies can leverage our AI accountability framework.
This framework is organized around four complementary principles:
- Governance—promote accountability by establishing processes to manage, operate, and oversee implementation
- Data—ensure quality, reliability, and representativeness of data sources and processing
- Performance—produce results that are consistent with program objectives
- Monitoring—ensure reliability and relevance over time
We applied this framework to audit the Department of Homeland Security’s use of AI and found that DHS’s data aren’t always reliable.
AI Accountability Framework
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