(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The Internal Revenue Service announced that it will begin using artificial intelligence technology in order to police U.S. citizens, raising concerns about weaponization of the software against conservatives, the Epoch Times reported.
“Right now, I believe that there are AI solutions that we have not yet leveraged that exist today that can help with some of these basic questions to the benefit of taxpayers,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel at an April 17 summit in Washington, D.C. intended to celebrate the integration of the emerging dystopian technology into the public sector.
“And on the other side of the equation, we are using AI today to do even more to unlock and spot this complexity,” added Werfel, who was recently grilled by two separate House panels following an inspector general’s report that outlined shocking security flaws within the agency and amid ongoing questions about its targeting of conservative groups.
Werfel said that the software could spot highly elaborate tax schemes and prevent fraud and waste within the IRS.
However, tech experts warned that the IRS may have more nefarious plans for the technology, as it might open up the door for very targeted discrimination.
“This technology really gives the IRS a shield to bulk flag anyone it finds problematic, which is very troubling,” said Jake Denton, a research associate at the Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center. “The effect of this can be absolutely devastating because essentially the IRS could weaponize it, and no one would have any idea.”
Recent allegations from House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, R-Ky., that Werfel was selectively enforcing tax-exempt rules for conservative groups and not leftist ones evoked bitter memories of the Obama-era scandal surrounding IRS official Lois Lerner, who ultimately was held in contempt of Congress for pleading the Fifth and refusing to testify, but was never prosecuted.
In 2017, courts forced the IRS to apologize for targetingd 40 groups that identified themselves as conservative in their applications for tax-exempt 501(c)3 organizations.
The groups faced additional bureaucratic reviews, intensive questioning and needless delays. The IRS also requested sensitive information from the groups that was irrelevant to their tax-exempt status.
In 2022 the federal government granted the IRS $80 billion in funding to implement the AI software.
“This kind of AI integration is perfect to cultivate the kind of discriminatory corruption people are most concerned about,” Denton said. “AI would allow bad actors within the agency to use the technology to target certain groups and now there would be nothing that the individual could do to contest the models since the process would have been automated away to an unexplainable black box.”
Denton explained that the goal is not to prevent the IRS from using AI, but to properly optimize the technology in order to prioritize transparency.
“We can set these kinds of guidelines before it is fully adopted and given its history, shouldn’t accept anything less,” he concluded.
An undercover report from an investigative journalist working with conservative activist James O’Keefe disclosed the alarming scope of the agency’s reliance on AI technology.
Alex Mena, a member of the IRS Criminal Investigations Unit, told the female journalist in a candid interview that he “doubts the constitutionality” of the IRS information gathering, which is overseen not by the Treasury Department but the Justice Department.
“We have, like, all the information from all the companies in the whole world actually, not just in the United States,” he confessed.
BREAKING: IRS official Alex Mena who works in “Criminal Investigations” says @IRSNews, ‘has no problem going after the small people, putting people in prison, and destroying people’s lives.’
Mena ‘doubts the constitutionality’ of his employer, the IRS, using AI to access… pic.twitter.com/KexsoTlMbz
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) February 21, 2024
