Carmem Domingues

Leaders across both the public and private sectors are facing significant pressure to adopt artificial intelligence across their organisations. The promise is that AI is the new engine of efficiency, making employees smarter and more productive, helping organisations move faster and more effectively. At the same time, increased AI-related layoffs across industries stoke fears among workers, who feel they must learn how to adopt AI quickly or be replaced by it.

In Part 3 of our ‘Government 3.0’ series, Victor Dominello and Carmem Domingues discuss the risks of passively accepting the baked-in bias of AI automation. Part 2 argued that faster processes are not the same as better public outcomes, and Part 1 discussed the need for AI that sharpens thinking rather than just speeding up processes. In the age of AI, the greatest risk to government integrity is not that machines become too smart, but that humans become too passive.

In Part 1 of this series, Victor Dominello and Carmem Domingues explained why Government 3.0 requires AI that sharpens thinking, not just speeding up processes. Now they look at how to overcome the ‘productivity paradox’. The promise of AI in the public sector is a dangerous half-truth. We are told it will clear backlogs and transform efficiency, but without a shift in architecture, AI is simply a turbocharger for a broken engine.