OPM wants more AI use in federal hiring

In an effort to spark more artificial intelligence use in federal hiring, the Office of Personnel Management is advising agencies that several common HR use cases generally aren’t considered “high impact” for the purposes of a federal policy governing the technology. The Thursday memo to department heads from OPM Director Scott Kupor argues that failure to adopt AI in federal hiring may be compromising “efficiency and quality” of that process. It shares OPM’s own assessment of how federal AI governance policy applies to the human capital space to provide agencies with a roadmap for use. Specifically, OPM concludes AI used for creating job announcements, evaluating applicants, reviewing files before an offer, and evaluation of hiring metrics isn’t considered high-impact in most instances. That means those uses wouldn’t be required to follow corresponding minimum risk management practices, such as conducting pre-deployment testing, conducting an impact assessment, and monitoring the tool for potential adverse impacts. In an accompanying blog post, OPM Chief Information Officer Adam Starr explained the memo is an attempt to aid “overly cautious” agencies that felt AI applications in hiring are considered high impact. “Too often, agencies were defaulting to the view that any use of AI in hiring was subject to the high-impact standard. In reality, that is not the case,” Starr wrote. “Instead, the inclusion of AI as a complement to human judgement is not only acceptable but leads to better outcomes.”

A U.S. district court judge mostly sided with Anthropic in its challenge against the Pentagon’s designation of the company as a supply chain risk and attempt by the Trump administration to ban use of its products across the government. In a 59-page order, Judge Rita Lin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of the Claude maker on its claims that the administration’s actions violated the First Amendment, the due process clause, and federal administrative procedure statute. “Though the Department of War is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were illegal and baseless,” Lin said. Lin’s ruling comes after months of strife between Anthropic and the Trump administration.

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