The State Department, Department of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have started testing artificial intelligence tools to help process large volumes of requests under the Freedom of Information Act, NBC News reported Wednesday.
Eric Stein, deputy assistant secretary for the State Department, said the agency is currently assessing two AI models to help handle FOIA requests.
One of these tools, he said, uses machine learning algorithms to sift through records in centralized archives and databases – which contain over 3 billion records.
Several government agencies have begun testing a Mitre-built AI prototype, dubbed FOIA Assistant, designed to find records in government datasets and recommend redactions of information under the law.
“It’s not perfect,” Jason Baron, a University of Maryland professor who helped test the prototype, said of FOIA Assistant. “But using this type of AI actually could be of enormous help in the future when agencies routinely are finding tens or hundreds of thousands of potentially responsive records that they otherwise would have to review manually, a process that almost assuredly will take many years.”
Though progress is being made, some civil rights and open government advocates have urged caution when implementing AI before standards are fully put in place.
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