Can AI solve the government's giant, growing backlog of public records requests?

Open government and civil rights advocates warn that using AI to answer Freedom of Information Act requests may create new problems.

By Lewis Kamb, NBC NEWS, August 1, 2023

A few federal agencies have started to use sophisticated artificial intelligence tools to help deal with immense caseloads of Freedom of Information Act requests, but some transparency advocates warn that the government needs additional safeguards before more widely deploying the technology.

Officials from multiple agencies also have separately tested an AI prototype called “FOIA Assistant” that’s being developed by a federally funded research group as a possible model for dealing with record-high numbers of new requests and growing backlogs of existing ones.

“There is no way for FOIA to work in the future unless you can automate searching of the millions, hundreds of millions, billions of records that these government agencies hold,” said Jason R. Baron, a University of Maryland information studies professor and leading expert on the use of artificial intelligence in government access.  “The problem is simply unsolvable without AI.”