House Defense Department andande Homeland Security officials on their use of Artificial Intelligence technology. They addressed ai Machine Learning, employee training, and potential Cyber Security risks before a House Oversight and accountability subcomm good afternoon the subcommittee on Cyber Community information will now come to order. We welcome everyone for their participation this afternoon. The chair made the clear recess. Ranking member connolly is running a few minutes late but we have another member here. We will go ahead and get started and get everybody plenty of time. They will be rolling in momentarily. I would like to recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening statement. Good afternoon and welcome to the hearing of the subcommittee on Cyber SecurityInformation Technology and government innovation. At the very first hearing of the subcommittee held earlier this year expert witnesses told us Artificial Intelligence, or ai, is likely to bring Disruptive Innovation in many fields. Ai should instigate economic growth, Higher Standards of living, and improve medical outcomes. Every industry an institution will still feel the impact of ai. Today we will discussed its impact on the largest and most powerful institution in the nation. The federal government. We know the federal government performs securing homeland, predicting weather, the cutting benefits and checks. Any of these functions could be greatly impacted by ai. It is clear from the hundreds of ai cases pursuant to an executive order issued under the lassen ministration. Federal agencies are attempting to use ai systems to enhance Border Security and make air travel safer and speed up eligibility and termination for Social Security and disability benefits. Just to name a few cases. We will also shake up the federal workforce itself. Her a lot about how ai can disrupt the private sector workforce transforming or eliminating jobs and creating others. The federal government is the nations largest employer in many those employees work in whitecollar occupations. Ai is already reshaping because it has routine tasks more efficiently than humans. That will allow productivity but maximized. Ai can automate tasks and yield us much is 41 billion by reducing required labor hours. A separate study by the partnership of Republic Service for the business of government identified one 30,000 federal employee positions whose work would likely be impacted by ai. Including 20,000 irs tax examiners and agents. That begs the question whether we need a higher tens of thousands of new irs employees when ai can transform or replace the work of much of the current staff. I think every american could agree with that. Ai could make government work better but it is still just a tool, be it in a powerful one. But it could be used or abused without the proper court wells massive Training Data focuses complex algorithms. These algorithms can have results from their own designers and struggle to explain sometimes. We are learning this in real time. It is important we have federal governments exercising inappropriate bias. We also need to ensure federal governments use of ai does not intrude on the privacy rights of its own citizens. The bottom line is we need the government to harness ai to improve its operations while safeguarding against potential hazards. Congress enacted the ai in Government Act in 2020. The Current Administration took office and that requires the office of budgetary against the acquisition unused systems. It also had the office of management. The administration is way overdue in complying with the law. It has now more than two years issuing guidance on agencies and it is overdue in determining how many federal employees have skills and how many need be hired or trained. I will also say before was made public i asked the question if ai was included at the time. It was not. The administrations failure to comply is called out on the lengthy paper issued by Stanford University institute. The paper from many agencies have not had the inventory. Others have admitted key use cases including dhs having a important facial technician program. Noncompliance with various mandates by concluding americans ai elevation ecosystem is threatened by week implementation of these legal requirements. Most of the ai policy is focused on how the federal government should use ai in the private sector. The executive branch cannot lose focus from getting its own house in order. It needs to a properly manage its own use of ai systems consistent with the law. This committee will keep insisting safeguarding of government use with ai. I am developing further legislation to ensure federal agencies deploy ai systems transparently and safety. We have a huge opportunity before us and i would love to see us harness the technology that is rapidly evolving. I expect this hearing will help inform many of these efforts. With that, we are going to go to, we are going to go to our witnesses. When connolly comes in we will give him time for his opening statement. Im pleased to introduce our first witness, dr. Director of the White House Office of science and Technology Policy burning her the designation of the president s science advisor. Dr. Is also the first science advisor to be nominated to the president s cabinet. This is her first appearance as a witness before congress. We are pleased to have you here today and grateful that you showed up. I will tell you not everybody does. They sometimes send the under secretary or the assistant to the assistant to the assistant and it is refreshing to have someone actually show up that we have asked for. I want to thank you for your time today. Our second witnesses dr. Craig martel, the digital ai officer with the department of defense. Our third witnesses mr. Eric heitzman chief Information Officer with the department of Homeland Security. We welcome everyone. We are pleased to have everyone here this afternoon. Pursuant to Committee Rule 9g the witnesses will please stand and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so hope you got . Let the record show the witnesses all answered in the affirmative. We appreciate all of you being here today. Before hearing your testimony i would like to remind the witnesses that we have statements that will appear in full on the hearing record. Please keep your statements to five minutes. And please press the button on your microphone in front of you so that it is on the members can hear you. When you begin to speak the light will turn green. After four minutes the light will turn yellow. When the red light comes on your five minutes is expired we ask you to please wrap it up for us. Okay. All right. All right. With that i am going to gild for my Ranking Member of the subcommittee, mr. Connolly. Thank you madame chairwoman. May have three subcommittee hearings today. I am a little bit out of breath. But thank you for coming. Earlier this week the majority leader Chuck Schumer held his inaugural ai form and senator hickenlooper held a hearing on the need to transparency in our ai. Today our subcommittee return for a second hearing on ai to discuss its uses within our own federal government. I think its very clear all members of congress are interested. Im not sure how much members of Congress Know about it. This subcommittee is proud to continue its historical leadership in the ai space. As many of you know former subcommittee chair, will heard, had a threepart hearing series on Artificial Intelligence. Analogic comments focused on vagal sedition. These show the federal government can leverage ai to better serve the public. Federal agencies are already using Ai Technology to cut costs and improve services and strengthen existing systems. The u. S. Cyber command in the department of Homeland Security employ Ai Technology to protect our networks encounter cyber attacks. The u. S. Postal service is currently piloting an Autonomous Vehicle did employees Ai Technology. The housing and urban development and the u. S. Immigration services are using ai checkbox to facilitate communication with the public looking for help from the agency. However, like all new tools, if used improperly, ai could result in unintended consequences. For example, Automated Systems can inadvertently perpetuate societal biases such as faulty fig so Recognition Technology or opaque sentencing algorithms used by the criminal justice system. Ai can also threaten jobs. Proliferate misinformation and raise serious concerns. That is why i applaud the Biden Administration for proactively taking significant steps to ensure transparency in the governments use of ai. Last september the white house received a blueprint for an ai bill of rights to ensure the protection of civil rights in the algorithmic age. Prior to that the National ArtificialInitiative Act codified the establishment of the American Ai Initiative and the National Ai Advisory committee. This subcommittee looks forward to hearing an update from the panelists on the joint work with the sector of commerce to advise the white house on the policy. Everyone can agree the government has a colossal responsibility in developing the necessary guardrails to curb the risk of this Incredible Technology while allowing it to flourish. This committee must hold federal agencies accountable and make sure they are making appropriate choices about whether and when ai is right for them. The federal government was also intentionally train, recruit, and maintain workforce that is comfortable and confident with this technology. That is why the chairwoman and i work with the ai training act of 2023. Out of our committee be expanded ai training within the executive branch. Really important. I commend my college for that bipartisan collaboration. Ai is already changing the world around us in some anyways. We need to step up to the challenge and mitigate the risks. The federal government needs to ensure this technology is created, deployed, and used in a safe, ethical, productive, and equitable manner. With that i yield back. Thank you madame chairwoman. I have unanimous consent from clay higgins for todays hearing for the purpose of asking questions. Without objections i would now like to recognize dr. To please begin your Opening Statements. Thank you so much. Thank you to you connolly. I appreciate the work you all are doing on ai. Its great to be here with my colleagues to be able to spend this time to focus on these important issues. I have three messages today. The first one is ai is top priority for President Biden. He is very clear that powerful technology over time. We look around the world we can see every nation is bracing to use ai to build future with their own values. I think we can all agree we do not want to live in a future that is designed by technology shaped by an authoritarian regime. The president is very clear that American Leadership in the world today requires American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence. Second, for americans to lead an ai government has core responsibilities. One set of those responsibilities is to manage the risk for ai. As both of the Opening Statements have noted, ais risks are broad and the applications are broad. The risks range from fraud in information integrity. They include risks related to social insecurity, privacy, civil rights, civil liberties, and risks to jobs and the economy. Some of these risks can be addressed under existing laws and regulations. Some of these risks can be managed by making sure that government uses ai responsibly. And in some cases we do expect legislation will be required. That is about mitigating risks. The reason we are doing all of this work to manage risks is so that our country can use the technology to build the future. If you look at what companies are doing they are raising the build printer products and Services TransformIndustries Using ai. This is the technology that holds equally great promise for the work the government does for the american people. And that has been, that becomes the second core responsibility of government. I think both of you spoken to that as well in your opening remarks. You will hear for my colleagues about Homeland Security national security. There is a lot to say there. I will also briefly touch on many other Important Services from the Public Purposes that our government is responsible for. When you look across federal government today you will see agencies are starting to use the insights they can gleam from this data that they generate in the viewing of their business. Ai technology is also changing it could speed up, simple via come up make those administrative processes work better. The examples are wideranging. They include ai for weather prediction, ai to help us keep air travel safer, ai is being used to speed up the processing of disability determinations. It is being used to improve how we process patent applications. Those are just some examples today. If you take a peek inside labs around the country and look at what is happening with federally funded r d, you will get a glimpse of where the future is going. Ai is playing a huge role there as well. Ai can enable the design of the materials that we need for advanced batteries, storage, things that are critical to our clean energy future. Ai can change the way that we predict disasters, the way we implement plans, and climate change. Ai can transform design. It can allow us to tailor Clinical Care to each individual patient. It can enable major advances in population health. Use responsibly ai can help us deliver Better Outcomes and to create new possibilities for the american people. My third message for you, i will end with this. The biden and harrison ministration is taking action to meet this moment. We moved with urgency on various steps that started with the ai bill of rights. But we published about a year ago. And i want to emphasize especially in a time when technology is moving as fast as it is, it is so important to be clear about our values and what the importance of rights of safety and security about privacy. That was the Important Role of the ai bill of rights. More recently, because of the president s leadership, 15 companies have made voluntary commitments to focus on Safety Security and trustworthiness in their ai systems that they are developing and driving. That is the companys responsibilities. Today the white house is looking you are running out of time. Absolutely. We are working today in the white house on an executive order on guidance for departments and agencies, that is the executive branch. We continue to work with our International Allies because ai does not stop at orders. Finally, we remain committed to working closely with congress on a bipartisan basis. This work is urgent, and important. I look forward to working with you. Dr. Martel. Please begin your statement. Distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you very much for inviting us here today. I would like to start by asking, what is ai . We should have a common definition her head. When i say the freight official intelligence, i simply mean, statistics and scale. We gather massive amounts of data from the past, we use it to build a model, and use it to protect the future. It is really important to think about it that way. Because statistically, it is number 100 correct. For every model that we build it will always sometimes get wrong. The large part of what we have to think about it is, how do we understand when it gets wrong, and what should we do when he gets wrong . It is important to remember that. My other panelists may have different definitions. But that is the operative one for me. I look forward to sharing the ongoing efforts of Office Around data, analytics, and Ai Technologies to accomplish our National Defense mission. Data analytics and ai are integral in accomplishing the priority set forth in the National Defense strategy. To support these efforts that has five initiatives. Improving data quality, developing robust performance metrics, providing enterprise ai scaffolding, building the data in immigration for in developing a robust plan quality data is the foundational priority. We are foc