Federal agencies are increasingly turning to generative artificial intelligence to continue their missions, according to a new surveillance report which has found cases of use of emerging technology jumping nine times in a selection of almost a dozen agencies last year.
In a report On Tuesday, the government of government responsibility said that AI generative use cases in a group of 11 federal agencies increased from 32 to 282 from 2023 to 2024, according to an analysis of the inventories of these agencies.
GAO has established several ways of which these agencies operated a generative AI last year, indicating that technology can “improve written communications, the effectiveness of access to information and monitoring of program status”.
The examples included the Ministry of Veterans Combatants using automation for the processing of medical imaging in veterans diagnostic services, as well as the initiative of the Ministry of Health and Social Services to extract information from publications concerning the confinement of poliovirus.
HHS reported the largest jump in the 11 agencies, going from seven cases of generative use of AI in 2023 to 116 in 2024, according to the report. The Ministry of Internal Security had the second increase, going from five to 36 uses between 2023 and last year.
The report has shown that even agencies that declared little cases without use in 2023 increased their use the following year. For example, the VA, the State Department and the Commerce Department went from a use case in 2023 to 27, 18 and 17, respectively.
The agencies have reported several potential advantages of their use of generative AI and GAO concluded that agencies mainly use generative AI for internal agency operations, in particular the rationalization of workflows and communications.
GAO has said that agencies also intend or already integrate generative AI into government services via tools such as chatbots and virtual assistants for the public. The guard dog has also noted that agencies in the health and health field use a generative AI for the research and analysis of complex medical data.
However, some agency officials have expressed challenges with a generative AI, including compliance with existing federal policies and the maintenance of technical and budget resources, according to the report.
The annual AI inventory process was created for the first time by a decree in December 2020, which ordered the federal agencies to maintain the inventories of their current and planned non-self-intensification uses of AI.
In the 11 agencies analyzed by the GAO, the number of cases of use of AI reported increased from 571 to 1,110 in 2024, according to the report.
Last year, also marked the first year that a consolidated list was available on Github, a code storage and code management platform, although it does not differentiate what cases were a generative AI.
FedSSCOOP previously reported that the consolidated inventory 2024 listed at the GitHub management and budget office showed that 1,757 public uses of AI in 37 federal agencies. The inventory was updated earlier this year, increasing the total by around 370 uses.
