ai has been used to defraud people in everything from calling voters to faking gifts from celebrities. Now, the US Treasury Department claims ai has played a critical part;cpos:3;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “>Machine learning ai has played a pivotal role in its improved fraud detection processes over the past year: if a broken clock can be right twice a day, maybe ai can do some good once?
In a new statement, the Treasury says it prevented and recovered “fraud and improper payments” worth more than $4 billion during the last fiscal year (October 2023 to September 2024). This figure represents a huge increase over the previous year, which reached only $652.7 million. A quarter of the $4 billion apparently comes from recovering by “accelerating the identification of Treasury check fraud with machine learning artificial intelligence.” Again, does it feel a little like making a deal with the devil? Yes. But that's 2024.
The $1 billion is in addition to $2.5 billion for prevention to “identify and prioritize high-risk transactions” and another $680 million for additional prevention techniques.
Treasury plans to share the technology with other federal agencies, although some have already implemented their own. The IRSfor example, it has taken steps to use ai to find tax evaders, automate services and conduct audits.
