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Robert Kovacev Quoted on Possible Impact of IRS Use of AI in Politico

Subtitle
"Is That the IRS With Your Refund? No, It's a ChatGPT Scam"

Politico

Robert Kovacev commented in Politico on the possible impact of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). "So what the IRS is doing, as far as we know any details, is they are having these algorithms look at huge masses of data — and that's tax return data, financial data, data from third-party reporting and information they're getting from treaty partners and international information sharing—and they are using that to locate targets," Kovacev said. The process could entail, for instance, looking at credits claimed by businesses of a certain size and targeting a business that claimed a credit several standard deviations larger than the average, according to Kovacev. If an algorithm wants to maximize collections, it could conclude going after low-income taxpayers is the most efficient way to do so, since those taxpayers don't have the resources that higher income folks do to fight collections, Kovacev said by way of example. "Because these algorithms are black boxes, this could happen without anyone ever intending that result, or even that it's happening before it's already happened."