AI For $1 Billion

The Treasury Department is one of the most important and least-understood government agencies. Among its many responsibilities is to make 1.4 billion payments to 100 million people annually on behalf of the federal government.

Total value: $6.9 trillion.

With that much money flowing in that many directions, cheating is inevitable. So Treasury tries to combat fraud in a few ways: screening applicants, monitoring transactions, confirming identities, and so on.

Historically, Treasury has clawed back hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud yearly. Last year, though, was different. In 2023, Treasury stopped or recovered $4 billion in fraud–up from $652 million the year before–including $1 billion attributed to Treasury's use of AI.

AI is weird and misunderstood in many ways, so a billion dollars in real value from an overlooked area of the federal government is a positive sign.