Alternate links: Google News | Twitter

After cataloging the reasons that it's nearly impossible for the IRS to use AI, Werfel quietly began to list some of the ways in which the IRS was already using AI. Natural-language processing was speeding taxpayers through call centers and getting them to the right human representative. Large language models, including GPT-4 and Meta's Llama, were being tested to assist with code generation. Bespoke AI was helping employees spot complex tax-evasion schemes. Most impressive of all, AI was assisting in the translation of the IRS Individual Master File (IMF)"the massive Kennedy-era database that contains not just the tax records of every American, but every change ever made to those tax records"into modern software languages. The IMF is the white whale of obsolete government technology; the team that drags it into the present should be given its own national park.