From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Technology Assessment: Artificial Intelligence Description: New Artificial Intelligence technologies may fill you with hope or dread. But AI has arrived, and GAO takes a look at how it may affect some industry sectors. Related GAO Work: GAO-18-142SP: Technology Assessment: Artificial Intelligence: Emerging Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications. Released: March 2018 [ Background Music ] [ Tim Persons: ] It's important not to be afraid of the issues. It is more appropriate to be concerned but not overly concerned. [ Matt Oldham: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt Oldham. Artificial intelligence is a concept that was once found only in science fiction from The Jetsons maid Rosie to Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it seems many in popular culture have believed AI is an inevitable evolution in humanity's journey. Granted, there's no telling if we'll ever face annihilation threat from Skynet or benefit from the services of a Lieutenant Commander Data but one thing is looking almost certain, AI technologies are coming and they're bringing changes. I sat down with Tim Persons, GAO's Chief Scientist, to talk about a comptroller general forum that explored AI, its potential benefits, challenges, and implications. So Tim, did the forum focus on any particular industry sectors? [ Tim Persons: ] Yes. So we focused on four different things that conveyed a different context of risk in each case. So let me say what I mean. The four were cyber security risks. So that's the idea of information risks. Automated vehicles. So that's safety of life risk, right? If you get in a car, you want to be safe. Criminal justice risk. So it's social and constitutional risk management. And then financial services. So financial risks. And what we see is that, although AI in essence even across all these sectors is essentially the same technology, it expresses itself differently and will need to be regulated differently or understood differently in its various expressions. [ Matt Oldham: ] I'd like to take a look at each of those. Let's start off with cyber security. It seems like this is a natural fit for AI technology. [ Tim Persons: ] That cyber is a key pain point across, again, all sectors. We all remember we're at risk for losing our credit card information and we're concerned about our social security numbers and rightly so. And the problem is so massive and complex, it's increasingly apparent that we need artificial intelligence like machines to help us just police what's going on and try to identify fraud and things like that to help mitigate it. So a lot of opportunities there. And yet, of course, some policy challenges there particularly in terms of preserving civil liberties and not having a surveillance state, for example. [ Matt Oldham: ] We recently did a podcast on emerging technologies in the financial services sector and one of the things that was the focus was something like robo investing. Is this the sort of AI application in financial services? [ Tim Persons: ] Yes and financial services has, at least, a couple things we looked at in the forum. One was on this just how financial services are already being changed and there's a lot of powerful work going on in terms of automated investing and things like that which takes out some of the human emotional risk in the marketplace. So that's an interesting dynamic. On the regulatory side, of course, our SEC is our important regulator of the financial and it's powerful to them because their job is to help make sure the playing field is even and to be able to look across the markets and try and sniff out anything that looks amiss or fraudulent or out of place. [ Matt Oldham: ] Moving on to automated vehicles, this is certainly a topic that's been in the news quite a bit for some time. What did the forum look at in the automated vehicle sector? [ Tim Persons: ] Right. So one of the key lessons learned out of our Department of Transportation, what they've been doing is they've established something called a regulatory sandbox where they're allowed to say, 'well, let's see how the car operates so that we can inform and make better regulations.' We know with vehicles, you're going to -- we have regulation now on cars. You're going to need more but the fact that you have a driverless system changes the dynamic significantly. So it was important to construct that regulatory sandbox to be able to have the science and innovation go on and yet be informed, symbiotically is what we would say, you know together it's working with the regulatory system to say well what are virtuous rules that should be written that don't, at the same time, kill our innovation and competitiveness in the U.S. So a lot of excitement about the technology but there's just risks to manage obviously since you're taking the human out from behind the wheel. [ Matt Oldham: ] Rounding out the four sectors is criminal justice. Now this is one that seems a little more abstract to me. How does artificial intelligence play in the criminal justice sector? [ Tim Persons: ] Every police municipality, state or local municipality has the issue of finite resources. There's only so many things, crime of course is to a greater or less extent challenges in all these areas. So how you distribute the resources and yet, how you, at the same time, preserve constitutional liberties and avoid and mitigate biases and so on, that's the key opportunity here for them. It's a challenge and opportunity for criminal justice. So the idea about making a more blind system of justice, more effective system is what's in play and yet again, not taking the humans fully out of the loop. That's never intended on these things on the higher end decision making where wisdom and knowledge is required beyond what a machine can or will have. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] I'll be the first to admit maybe it's too easy to relate AI to characters in books and movies without acknowledging AI is gaining admission into our everyday lives. And maybe that's because of how difficult it is to predict how much change AI will bring. Tim, what came out of this forum on artificial intelligence technologies? [ Tim Persons: ] The economy is and will continue to be affected in different ways. Thinking of this in a foresight context is useful to try and just anticipate or mitigate. Doesn't mean we're going to be able to control things. In fact, I think it'll be just setting the opportunity for things to proliferate but lots of sectors are being and will be affected. I think there's going to be a lot of regulatory reform that's needed on the government side and yet, I think there's going to be continued innovation on -- in terms of the private sector doing their work and that they should be allowed to continue to go on but to think through, I think perhaps more holistically in terms of ethical, legal, and social issues as well. It's the idea of you can do something with technology but should you? Or how can it be done is going to be an important area? So on the government side, I think just understanding its affects, how we do jobs and training, how we come up with what's called explainable AI so that we understand what the algorithm is likely if not guaranteed to do. And being able to just have that ongoing symbiosis between private side and then the public sector side. [ Matt Oldham: ] If there's one concept that our listeners can take away from this forum, what would it be? [ Tim Persons: ] I think the main thing is be not afraid. You think about great movies and stuff, I enjoy the sci-fi movies myself. Those are fun but that's not the reality. And so it's important not to be afraid of the issues. It is, I think, more appropriate to be concerned but not overly concerned. It's a how might we be able to utilize this for greater good and yet mitigate risks that we do want to avoid those unintended consequences. We know this is going to have effects on jobs and yet there's opportunities. It'll be different kinds of jobs that are coming out and I think we need to think about in that way where we're cautiously optimistic about what this can and should do but again, keeping an eye carefully on each of these areas. These are just several of many, many others and what it means moving forward. So thinking prospectively I think will be important for this technology for sure. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] Thanks for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at gao.gov.