As the federal government faces hundreds of billions of dollars in estimated annual fraud losses, a bipartisan majority of voters want it to use artificial intelligence to help catch waste and abuse, a new poll found.
In the latest The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll, 60% of registered voters said they support using artificial intelligence to help detect fraud, waste or abuse in government programs such as Medicaid. Twenty-seven percent opposed it and 13% were unsure.
The federal government could lose an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion a year to fraud, according to the Government Accountability Office, based on fiscal 2018-2022 data, though the tools meant to catch it have a mixed record.
Support crossed party lines. Nearly three-quarters of Republicans, 74%, backed the use of AI to detect fraud, along with 57% of independents and 48% of Democrats. Even among Democrats, the group most divided on the question, more supported the idea than opposed it.
The question comes as the government expands its use of AI and data matching to flag suspect payments. In fiscal 2025, federal agencies reported an estimated $186 billion in improper payments, about 82% of it from overpayments, concentrated in five programs that include Medicare and Medicaid, the program the poll asked voters about.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services screened 1 billion payments through the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay system in fiscal 2024 and prevented 363,386 payments worth $2.6 billion.
Of $765.8 billion in overpayments that agencies attributed to data-access problems between fiscal 2021 and 2024, about 73% — or $556.6 billion — stemmed from a failure to access data agencies already possessed, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The scale of outright fraud has been more difficult to measure. The GAO estimate, from 2024, was the first and only government-wide fraud figure of its kind. GAO has said it has no plans to update the spending-side number, having recommended that the Treasury Department develop a method for producing one instead. Treasury had not done so as of July 2026.
A bipartisan majority wants the save America act too but neither one are gonna happen. The demons in congress are always gonna look out for themselves and not for people they are supposed to represent.