As artificial intelligence becomes part of the work of government, understanding how public institutions use it is increasingly important. A new research platform developed by a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan’s Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia (WCEE) aims to make that landscape easier to navigate—and its implications easier to examine.

Irakli Petriashvili, a Fall 2026 Weiser Professional Development Fellow, developed the U.S. Federal AI Observatory to bring publicly reported information about federal AI use into one accessible research resource. The platform brings together 3,611 AI use cases across 41 federal agencies, helping researchers, public officials, practitioners, and interested citizens explore how the technology is being used across government.

An associate professor at the University of Georgia in Tbilisi, Petriashvili is an anti-corruption researcher and public sector auditing expert. His work focuses on strengthening accountability and transparency through innovative institutional reforms and technologies. The Observatory extends that focus to a rapidly evolving question: how to turn growing amounts of public information about government AI into knowledge people can use.

Rather than examining individual technologies in isolation, the platform offers a broader view of federal AI adoption. Users can explore where adoption is accelerating, how agencies differ, which technologies and vendors appear across government, and how governance practices are evolving. These comparisons can also help identify opportunities for agencies to learn from one another.

The project is intended to do more than document technological change. By making publicly reported AI activity easier to explore, Petriashvili seeks to encourage a wider conversation about transparency, responsible innovation, and the relationship between emerging technologies and public institutions.

“WCEE provided an important intellectual setting for this work. The fellowship created space to reach beyond a single discipline, engage with U-M’s broader academic community, and connect questions about AI with larger issues of governance, accountability, and institutional change,” Petriashvili commented.

The Weiser Professional Development Fellowship brings faculty from institutions of higher education in select European and Eurasian countries for short-term research visits in Ann Arbor under the mentorship of a U-M faculty partner. The annual application deadline is January 15. Read more.