Monday press release
, the Internal Revenue Service announced that as part of a renewed effort to ensure fairness and crack down on lawbreakers, it'll start using "cutting-edge machine learning technology" to stop the US' wealthiest individuals and corporations from cheating on their taxes.
The AI integration is part of an effort to "ensure the IRS holds our wealthiest filers accountable to pay the full amount of what they owe," IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in the release. The IRS is "deploying new resources towards cutting-edge technology," he added, "to improve our visibility on where the wealthy shield their income and focus staff attention on the areas of greatest abuse.
And according to the IRS, the crackdown is already on the verge of getting started. By the end of September, the release says, the IRS will "open examinations" of "75 of the largest partnerships in the US." These partnerships will include "hedge funds, real estate investment partnerships, publicly traded partnerships," and "large law firms," among other ventures in various industries.
It's a fascinating application for AI, as long as it actually gets results. The IRS is keeping specifics about the system pretty close to the vest, but it's pretty widely agreed that one of AI's strongest use cases tends to be pattern recognition.