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Report: AI could save agencies $41B annually

Many worry that artificial intelligence and robots could begin taking jobs away from humans. But in the federal government, these new technologies could mean billions in savings for agencies, according to a new report.
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Many worry that artificial intelligence and robots could begin taking jobs away from humans. But in the federal government, these new technologies could mean billions in savings for agencies, according to a new report.

28-page report from Deloitte, titled AI-augmented Government, examines several case studies, provides a taxonomy of AI systems, and concludes that in the federal government alone, automation with “high investment” could free up as many as 1.2 billion hours of work and save up to $41.1 billion annually. Through the use of rules-based systems, machine translation, computer vision, machine learning, robotics and natural language processing, the report notes the unusual but “tantalizing” paradigm presented by AI in which speed is increased, quality is improved, and cost is reduced — all in parallel.

And this reality is not so far out as many may think, according to William Eggers, a co-author of the report and executive director of the Deloitte Center for Government Insights.

“Even when you see some of the amazing advances in machine translation over the last year, what that shows is that the technologies are getting better very, very quickly and at the same time, they’re falling in cost in terms of deployment,” Eggers said. “When you see that sort of thing occurring, you start seeing adoption increasing.”

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Find the report and more about it in Colin Wood’s coverage on StateScoop.

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