Mike Horton has been chosen as the acting chief artificial intelligence officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation, according to a post the executive shared on LinkedIn.
As the acting CAIO, Horton is charged with supervising the department’s AI use and fostering AI innovation. His other responsibilities include ensuring compliance with federal guidelines and regulations through risk assessment of AI applications, establishing and updating processes for measuring, monitoring and evaluating AI applications’ performance and utilizing a specific program for AI risk management.
Horton has been with USDOT for over five years. He joined the department in 2019 as team lead of the Federal Aviation Administration Human Capital Data Analytics and Systems. He then became deputy chief data officer in 2023, overseeing all the non-geospatial divisions within the Office of the Chief Data Officer.
As an educator, Horton was an adjunct professor at George Mason University and Saint Joseph’s University’s Erivan K. Haub School of Business. He currently teaches part-time at Northeastern University.
The AI governance professional served as a senior analyst, researcher and data engineer for the Office of Financial Research of the Department of the Treasury. He was also an analyst, researcher, investigator and data scientist for the Employee Benefits Security Administration of the Department of Labor.