"The most challenging problems AI may help us solve--from fighting terrorists to serving vulnerable populations--will involve government," according to "The Future Has Begun," a report on the impact of AI on government by the Partnership for Public Service and the IBM Center for the Business of Government. "More immediately, though not less consequentially, AI will change the way public servants do their jobs." A decade-long collaboration between the University of Southern California and Los Angeles International Airport produced an AI-enabled system aimed at helping law-enforcement units deploy their limited staff more effectively. After analyzing potential targets, the system recommends randomized police patrol routes and schedules so terrorists can't anticipate where and when they will run into security checkpoints. The system has since been used by the U.S. Coast Guard to randomize boat patrol routes in major ports and by the Transportation Security Administration to assign air marshals to flights. More recently, another version of the AI system has been developed to help rangers fight wildlife poachers around the world.

At the risk of dating myself, one of my favorite movies growing up as a kid was "WarGames" starring Matthew Broderick. I didn't realize it at the time, but in the climactic scene, the large supercomputer'WOPR' operated by the Defense Department, showed artificial intelligence capabilities. By playing tic-tac-toe against itself, it learned a lesson that prevented global thermonuclear war. In many ways, Hollywood has warped what many think of when they first hear the term artificial intelligence, or AI. My thoughts used to go to movies like "The Terminator" or "The Matrix" where sentient machines develop the ability to think for themselves and try to overthrow humankind.

Let our Chatbot help--type your question above to explore AI topics. Artificial intelligence already helps run government, with cognitive applications doing everything from reducing backlogs and cutting costs to handling tasks we can't easily do on our own, such as predicting fraudulent transactions and identifying criminal suspects via facial recognition. Indeed, while we expect AI-based technology in the years ahead to fundamentally transform how public-sector employees get work done--eliminating some jobs, redesigning countless others, and even creating entirely new professions1--it's already changing the nature of many jobs and revolutionizing facets of government operations. Agencies today face new choices about whether some work should be fully automated, divided among people and machines, or performed by people but enhanced by machines. Our latest report, AI-augmented government, conservatively estimates that simply automating tasks that computers already routinely do could free up 96.7 million federal government working hours annually, potentially saving $3.3 billion.

Artificial intelligence already helps run government, with cognitive applications doing everything from reducing backlogs and cutting costs to handling tasks we can't easily do on our own, such as predicting fraudulent transactions and identifying criminal suspects via facial recognition. Indeed, while we expect AI-based technology in the years ahead to fundamentally transform how public-sector employees get work done--eliminating some jobs, redesigning countless others, and even creating entirely new professions1--it's already changing the nature of many jobs and revolutionizing facets of government operations. Agencies today face new choices about whether some work should be fully automated, divided among people and machines, or performed by people but enhanced by machines. Our latest report, AI-augmented government, conservatively estimates that simply automating tasks that computers already routinely do could free up 96.7 million federal government working hours annually, potentially saving $3.3 billion. At the high end, we estimate that AI technology could free up as many as 1.2 billion working hours every year, saving $41.1 billion.