VA Leveraging AI to Empower Employees Helping Veterans

A top official within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) said today that the VA is taking a more “cautious” approach when it comes to veteran-facing AI and is instead leveraging the tool internally to empower employees helping veterans.

“We’re being more cautious on the directly veteran-facing applications of AI,” VA OCTO Data and AI Health Product Lead Kaeli Yuen said during Washington Technology and Nextgov/FCW’s 2024 Federal Health Summit in Reston, Va., today. “The way that we are impacting veterans with AI at this point is by empowering the employees that are answering their questions.”

“We don’t have, to my knowledge, direct generative AI chatbots directly talking to veterans or anything like that,” she continued, adding, “We’re moving much more cautiously there until we can understand the risks better.”

Yuen added that despite not offering AI tech directly to vets, “everything we’re doing is ultimately veteran-focused, and even things we do for employee productivity, it’s so we can more quickly serve veterans.”