Be Wary of the Department of Homeland Security’s AI Ambitions
On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the hiring of 10 artificial intelligence experts as the first members of its new “AI Corps,” which will eventually become a 50-member advisory group. The new hires “will help DHS responsibly leverage new technology and mitigate risks across the homeland security enterprise,” a press release explained.
AI shows promise for “strategic mission areas,” DHS says, such as “countering fentanyl trafficking, combatting online child sexual exploitation and abuse, delivering immigration services, fortifying critical infrastructure, and enhancing cybersecurity.”
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has gone so far as to say that “there is not a domain” of the department that “could not use AI, if in fact we learn how to use it responsibly” and understand the implications for civil liberties. But Americans shouldn’t count on the government to stick to that standard and shouldn’t assume that they’ll be immune to AI-related harms just because DHS says it’ll use the technology in specific ways.
DHS “has regularly rolled out unproven programs that rely on algorithms and risk the rights of the tens of millions of Americans,” wrote the Brennan Center for Justice’s Faiza Patel and Spencer Reynolds last month. For one, “the screening, vetting, and watchlisting regimes that are supposed to keep tabs on potential terrorism appear never to have been tested.” DHS also “runs sweeping social media monitoring programs that collect information on Americans’ political views and activities” despite having “demonstrated no security value,” argued Patel and Reynolds.
Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) pointed out that DHS, though required “to maintain an inventory of AI use cases,” did not publish an accurate one. “Although DHS has a process to review use cases before they are added to the AI inventory, the agency acknowledges that it does not confirm whether uses are correctly characterized as AI,” the GAO found.
The AI Corps is one of many recent pushes to incorporate AI in more DHS activities. Earlier this year, the department launched a $5 million set of pilot programs that would “use A.I. models like ChatGPT to help investigations of child abuse materials, human and drug trafficking,
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