A new artificial intelligence tool designed to crack down on fraud has helped the UK government recover almost £500m over the last year, the BBC can reveal. More than a third of the money clawed back related to fraudulent activity during the Covid-19 pandemic, with other cash being recouped from unlawful council tax claims and illegal subletting of social housing. The government will announce later that a new AI tool which has helped to identify the fraud will now be licensed to other countries, including the US and Australia. Civil liberties campaigners have previously criticised the Labour government for its use of AI in trying to counter fraud. The Cabinet Office says the £480m recovered in the 12 months from April 2024 is the largest sum ever reclaimed by government anti-fraud teams in a single year.

Thousands of civil servants at the heart of the UK government, including those working directly to support Prime Minister Keir Starmer, are using a proprietary artificial intelligence chatbot to carry out their work, New Scientist can reveal. Officials have refused to disclose on the record exactly how the tool is being used, whether the prime minister is receiving advice that has been prepared using AI or how civil servants are mitigating the risks of inaccurate or biased AI outputs. Experts say the lack of disclosure raises concerns about government transparency and the accuracy of information being used in government. After securing the world-first release of ChatGPT logs under freedom of information (FOI) legislation, New Scientist asked 20 government departments for records of their interactions with Redbox, a generative AI tool developed in house and trialled among UK government staff. The large language model-powered chatbot allows users to interrogate government documents and to "generate first drafts of briefings", according to one of the people behind its development.

Not a single Whitehall department has registered the use of artificial intelligence systems since the government said it would become mandatory, prompting warnings that the public sector is "flying blind" about the deployment of algorithmic technology affecting millions of lives. AI is already being used by government to inform decisions on everything from benefit payments to immigration enforcement, and records show public bodies have awarded dozens of contracts for AI and algorithmic services. A contract for facial recognition software, worth up to 20m, was put up for grabs last week by a police procurement body set up by the Home Office, reigniting concerns about "mass biometric surveillance". But details of only nine algorithmic systems have so far been submitted to a public register, with none of a growing number of AI programs used in the welfare system, by the Home Office or by the police among them. The dearth of information comes despite the government announcing in February this year that the use of the AI register would now be "a requirement for all government departments".

For the last 20 years, the research on artificial intelligence has been very aggressive, which has resulted in great innovations. Big data, robotics, medical research, and autonomous vehicles are some of the applications that emerged from AI development. Government interest in AI has picked up in recent years as many government departments started to invest in AI in the form of pilot programs for various AI-based applications. AI adoption acts as a lever for transformational change in the way government services are conceived, designed, delivered, and consumed. It helps the government to provide integrated services to its citizens through the seamless flow of information across government departments.

Adobe's PDF format has entrenched itself so deeply in US government document pipelines that the number of state-issued documents currently in existence is conservatively estimated to be in the hundreds of millions. Often opaque and lacking metadata, these PDFs – many created by automated systems – collectively tell no stories or sagas; if you don't know exactly what you're looking for, you'll probably never find a pertinent document. And if you did know, you probably didn't need the search. However a new project is using computer vision and other machine learning approaches to change this almost unapproachable mountain of data into a valuable and explorable resource for researchers, historians, journalists and scholars. When the US government discovered Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) in the 1990s, it decided that it liked it.

Ministers and public bodies must reveal the architecture behind algorithms that influence exam results, housing benefit allocations and pothole repairs, under new transparency standards. The UK government has published a transparency standard for algorithms, the series of instructions that a computer follows to complete a task or produce a single outcome. Algorithms have become the focus of increasing controversy, whether through their role in deciding A-level results last year or making decisions about benefit claims. Under the new approach, government departments and public sector bodies will be required to explain where an algorithm was used, why it was used and whether it achieved its aim. There will also be an obligation to reveal the architecture behind the algorithm. It will be tested by several government departments and public sector bodies in the coming months before being reviewed again and formally launched next year.

SHENZHEN – Chinese drone giant DJI Technology Co. built up such a successful U.S. business over the past decade that it almost drove all competitors out of the market. Yet its North American operations have been hit by internal disturbances in recent weeks and months, with a raft of staff cuts and departures, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former employees. The loss of key managers, including some who have joined rivals, has compounded problems caused by U.S. government restrictions on Chinese companies, and raised the once-remote prospect of DJI's dominance being eroded, said four of the people, including two senior executives who were at the company until late 2020. About a third of DJI's 200-strong team in the region was laid off or resigned last year, from offices in Palo Alto, Burbank and New York, according to three former and one current employee. In February this year, DJI's head of U.S. R&D left and the company laid off the remaining R&D staff, numbering roughly 10 people, at its flagship U.S. research center in California's Palo Alto, four people said.

In essence, the Government Digital Service (GDS) helps government work better for everyone by leading digital transformation (1). In August 2019, Alison Pritchard was named Interim Director-General of the GDS (2), now that Kevin Cunnington has taken on a new role promoting government services around the world. Alison recently shared her journey in government so far and discussed what she looks forward to delivering over the coming months. Long before she joined any government department, Alison already had experience of meeting user needs and delivering more for less. Alison explains that she was given the chance to run the garden bar at the family pub at the age of eight.

For Telangana, information technology (IT) plays a significant role in its GDP. Overall services continue to contribute the maximum – around 55 per cent – of which IT contributes about 40 per cet in the state's GDP. Now, with emerging technologies such as AI and ML playing a defining role, the state is looking to leverage these frontier technologies to strengthen public service delivery and tech innovation. In an exclusive interview with ETGovernment's Mohd Ujaley, Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary - IT, Electronics & Communication Department said: "Emerging Technologies is the one area where we are making real advancement. In Telangana, these frontier technologies are being explored by different government departments to improve governance, public service delivery and creation of new jobs."

BCS, the chartered institute for IT, has released a report that supports the government's recent £13.5m investment in master's level AI conversion degrees. The report, 'Scaling up the ethical artificial intelligence MSc pipeline', was commissioned by the government's Office for AI, with the aim to understand what can be done to tackle the severe shortage of AI professionals, particularly from diverse backgrounds. The government's own AI review found that around 3,000 AI MSc graduates will be needed every year in order to furnish the country with the skills base it needs, and that ethical skills will be a necessary element of this base. Research for the report involved extensive consultation with more than 50 universities, blue-chip companies, the Institute of Coding, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Office for Students (OFS), as well as government departments including the DCMS and DfE. The report recommends that the AI sector should implement evidence-based solutions to diversity issues – such as those being used in engineering – as a "matter of urgency".