The Justice Department taps its first chief AI officer

AI is increasingly creeping into law enforcement, touching everything from sentencing and parole to public surveillance. Now, the agency overseeing all of that is hiring its first dedicated AI chief.

The Department of Justice just named Princeton professor Jonathan Mayer as its first chief AI officer, alongside the role of chief science and technology advisor. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the move is essential for the department to keep pace with rapidly evolving technological developments.

Building a tech guardrail inside Justice

Mayer’s immediate mandate is to build a team of technical and policy experts focused on cybersecurity and AI, while helping the department recruit much-needed tech talent.

The hire stems directly from the Biden administration's executive order on AI, which directed federal agencies to beef up internal AI expertise. For the DOJ, the high-stakes priority is crafting guidelines to ensure fairness whenever algorithmic tools are used in sentencing, parole, and surveillance.

Mayer is no stranger to DC. He previously served as chief technologist in the FCC's enforcement bureau and advised Kamala Harris on tech policy during her time in the Senate.

Why it matters

When AI goes off the rails in commercial chatbots, you get bad text. When it goes off the rails in the justice system, innocent people go to prison.

We think putting a seasoned technology law researcher in charge is a smart, overdue acknowledgment that the government cannot effectively regulate or deploy tools it doesn't deeply understand. Building an in-house bench of technical experts means vendors selling automated surveillance or risk-scoring software to police departments will likely face much sharper questions about bias and reliability going forward.