Artificial Intelligence: The Next Big Thing in Government

The Las Vegas health department typically selects at random the restaurants it will inspect. But earlier this year, it tried something new. The agency used a software program to analyze tens of thousands of tweets in order to identify possible food poisonings. The program then connected those tweets to specific restaurants and dispatched inspectors to check for any health violations. The Las Vegas experiment resulted in citations in 15 percent of inspections compared to just 9 percent when inspections were random.