Eric Hysen, chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, said DHS is taking a generalized and specific approach to workforce training when it comes to artificial intelligence as part of efforts to advance the responsible use of AI tools, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.
“The first is how we train our IT professionals. Across the department there are over 5,000 people we want to be able to build skills around AI data science and related fields to manage software acquisitions and other complex work in this space. That’ll be done as part of the new IT academy that we are standing up across DHS,” Hysen said.
“The second is around AI literacy for the entire DHS workforce. We are still in the early stages, but we are looking to offer AI literacy training to every DHS employee so that they can understand how to use AI systems effectively. They can understand risks posed by unintended bias or hallucinations, and know what how they should be thinking about using the outputs from AI in their work,” he added.
The CIO office has been working on the new IT academy and associated courses in the past 18 months and Hysen said he expects the initial components to come out in early 2024.
Hysen also talked about generative AI and the AI Safety and Security Advisory Board and his office’s efforts to finalize policies to advance AI adoption in support of mission areas.
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