Like most of its government peers, the Environmental Protection Agency adopted artificial intelligence and has filled its Inventory required by the federal government with more than a dozen use cases. But emerging technology should not be confused with a cure-all, warned the new computer chief of the agency on Tuesday.
Carter Farmer, who took the post of information director of EPA in May after More than seven years in the roles of computer systems At the American Institute of Peace, said during a Webinar Fedinsider that he observed a trend in organizations to “jump straight” to AI to “solve any problem”.
“They jump into it without asking the right questions first,” said Farmer. “Several times, the solution or the problem you are trying to solve does not need AI.”
In search of rapid solutions via AI without questioning the advantages and fires “can really slow down the process,” he added, especially if the technology chiefs have neglected a simpler – and cheaper – means of attacking the problem.
“If you don’t ask these questions in advance, you can go on a road far enough and … [then have to] Reverse and go back and find out where you should have come down first, “said Farmer.
EPA CIO’s comments on “Hyped Up” technologies occur at a time when the Trump administration pushes agencies to pursue largely the protocols of reporting reports of the Biden White House, although with certain key differences.
In an Office of Management and Budget document published last week, the administration detailed a report process on AI which obliges agencies to provide a large part the same information requested in the advice of the Biden era, but also eliminates a handful of data collection categories and declining pares of others, including certain risk management practices.
The new OMB AI guide was not covered during Tuesday’s webinar, but Farmer spoke for a long time of the need for the agency’s computer leaders to process data as “the backbone of what we do when we build systems”.
“The most critical part of this whole situation, especially when you use AI and many advanced technologies is that you need to document how the data has been used to define [an] Result, and it must be repeated, “said Farmer.” Someone must be able to take this data, follow your methodology and reach the same conclusion. “”
For the EPA, following the data goes hand in hand with “finding the best real uses where AI can be better applied,” noted Farmer. He shared an example of the use by the AI agency to classify and summarize public comments on the proposed regulations.
The EPA has historically used entrepreneurs to scrutinize the hundreds of thousands of comments often subject to the agency, said Farmer, rising to a one -month process. But with the development of an internal tool that operates AI, the agency will be able to connect the comments of regulations.gov In a system that provides information synthesized to an EPA employee who can quickly examine and interpret the results.
“It offers the possibility of considerably improving our processes … while remaining transparent to the public,” said Farmer. “Having a human in the process … is very important, and being also transparent for the public is just as important.”
Farmer said he was looking at the way of agentic AI while keeping in mind the mentality of “the spirit of the hive” which can settle when it comes to new technologies. And as a newcomer to the EPA and the role of the IOC, it is still focused on long and focusing computer priorities and how they align with its primordial transparency objectives.
“Several times, people think that modernization will lead to less transparency,” he said, “when in the real world processes and results, you actually see more transparency and the possibility of getting more data than you would never have had before.”
