A set of decades-old algorithms has finally met with adequate data and computing power. Organizations around the world are using this artificial intelligence to make better decisions; government agencies are not far behind either. AI has shown with tremendous potential and unbelievable promise. It is but natural that AI be applied to automate workflows based on something each citizen uses everyday -- language. Majors companies like IBM, Amazon and Microsoft, as well as upstarts like ours, Coseer, are investing in AI for language. The obvious course is to start with algorithms that have been so successful elsewhere.

Deep learning is cutting edge artificial intelligence. It's what Google used to build AlphaGo, which beat the world champion of board game Go earlier this year in China. And it's being used by many of the world's top tech companies as the basis for recommender systems, fraud detection and cybersecurity. Government should be using deep learning, because it is a sophisticated tool that can help agencies fulfill their mission for use cases as diverse as risk profiling, cost forecasting and the analysis of satellite imagery. An additional benefit that supports both recent governmentwide policy and tight budgets is that most of the best deep-learning algorithms are open source.