DHS needs to make use of AI to guard homeland safety

WASHINGTON – The Division of Homeland Safety will set up a brand new job drive to look at how the federal government can use synthetic intelligence expertise to guard the nation.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas introduced the duty drive Friday throughout a speech at a Council on International Relations occasion. It comes as fashionable AI instruments like ChatGPT have captured the general public’s consideration and triggered hopes and fears about the way it is likely to be used sooner or later. Mayorkas’ announcement reveals that the Biden administration is searching for methods to embrace AI’s potential advantages, whereas pondering via the attainable harms.

“Our division will lead within the accountable use of AI to safe the homeland,” Mayorkas stated, whereas additionally pledging to defend “in opposition to the malicious use of this transformational expertise.”

He added: “As we do that, we’ll be sure that our use of AI is rigorously examined to keep away from bias and disparate impression and is clearly explainable to the individuals we serve.”

Many tech leaders have raised considerations concerning the speedy growth of so-called generative AI fashions, fearing that their development and potential harms will outpace the flexibility to enter affordable safeguards. However on the identical time, tech corporations creating superior AI fashions and policymakers acknowledge the U.S. is in a fast-moving race in opposition to China to create the most effective AI.

Mayorkas gave two examples of how the duty drive will assist decide how AI could possibly be used to fine-tune the company’s work. One is to deploy AI into DHS programs that display cargo for items produced by pressured labor. The second is to make use of the expertise to raised detect fentanyl in shipments to the U.S., in addition to figuring out and stopping the circulation of “precursor chemical compounds” used to supply the harmful drug.

Mayorkas requested Homeland Safety Advisory Council Co-Chair Jamie Gorelick to check “the intersection of AI and homeland safety and ship findings that may assist information our use of it and protection in opposition to it.”

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