Keeping Public Services Human in the Age of AI

In the 1960s, people imagined the future in silver miniskirts and bubble helmets. Space-age cities, chrome houses, jetpacks. Today, those images look quaint. Not because people weren’t imaginative, but because their vision of the future was really just the present, sprayed silver.

We may be doing the same with AI.

When I try to picture what board papers, minutes, and accountability might look like in an AI-saturated public sector, I see two vivid scenarios. Both are dystopias, and both are probably as inaccurate as those 1960s sketches. But sketches can still help us think.

Scenario One: The Machines Take Over

Imagine a system that ingests everything — admissions data, demographics, social determinants, global trends, citizen feedback. It sees patterns no human leadership team could grasp. It allocates resources with exquisite precision: rigorous, transparent, technically defensible.

On paper, it’s better than us.

• No egos, politics, or pet projects.

• No fatigue from writing or reading complex board papers.

• No neglect of marginal groups.

It can even articulate its rationale more cleanly than most boards under audit.

So what’s the problem?

It’s tempting to say machines can’t show compassion or judge fairness. But is that true? With the right training, AI could outperform us in consistency, equity, even in surfacing minority voices we often overlook.

The dystopia here isn’t that AI fails at being human. It’s that it succeeds — and hollows out our capacity to wrestle with dilemmas ourselves. Our muscles for judgment, dissent, and ethical ambiguity could atrophy.

Fairness itself becomes opaque. An AI’s definition of equity might be optimised and unassailable, yet impossible for humans to interrogate. Boards (if they still exist) could be reduced to parroting explanations they don’t fully grasp. Accountability dissolves.

This is the first dystopia: sleek governance that looks “better,” while leaving humans diminished and dependent.

Scenario Two: We Fall Behind

Now flip the picture.

Out of fear or principle, public bodies keep AI at the door. Safeguards are multiplied. Committees are formed to “assess readiness.” Leaders insist democracy depends on humans staying in charge.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world moves on.

• Private providers use AI to slash waiting lists and target resources.

• Citizen groups use dashboards to protest inequality in real time.

• Communities organise their own data-driven services.

Public sector governance looks painfully slow. Papers are still drafted line by line. Data is still squashed into crude charts. Boards still wade through packs too heavy to digest.

People lose patience. Civil unrest grows. Communities bypass the state and take service delivery into their own hands - crowdfunding, self-organising, opting out of public provision. The shared infrastructure of fairness fractures. A hollowed-out state limps on, but legitimacy drains away.

This is the second dystopia: not noble resistance, but fragmentation.

The Way Forward: Equipping Ourselves for the Unknown

Neither dystopia will come true exactly as described. They are silver-foil futures — sketches shaped by 2025 understanding and assumptions. The real future will be stranger, with risks and unintended consequences we can’t yet name.

That’s why risk management in the age of AI has to reach new heights. We need sharper eyes, stronger habits of questioning, more courage to wrestle with dilemmas as they emerge. We won’t gain those skills by abdicating everything to AI.

History offers a metaphor. Okinawan farmers under samurai rule, outmatched by armour and swords, armed themselves with farm tools: pitchforks, sickles, sticks. Not because they could win, but because dignity demanded they try.

That’s us. We face a “foe” far superior in speed and processing power. We cannot out-muscle AI. But we can equip ourselves with the tools we have:

• Writing: not just drafting, but editing, curating, and scrutinising. The ability to make meaning visible and leave a human trace.
• Critical thinking: not cynicism, but vigilance. The capacity to interrogate assumptions, detect bias, and challenge logic — even when it arrives in flawless prose.

These are not nostalgic luxuries. They are survival skills. If decisions move beyond human comprehension, writing and critical thinking will help us keep a foothold in the process.

That is why public sector administration matters. Not because AI can’t draft, but because humans must still interpret, question, and decide. Writing skills are not becoming less important — they are becoming more important than ever. They are our pitchforks, our sickles, against the unknown.

The future won’t look like these scenarios, any more than today looks like a 1960s sci-fi magazine. It will surprise us. The only question is whether we meet that surprise unarmed — or trained and ready, with the imperfect but vital tools of writing and thinking.

This is a shortened version of a post that originally appeared on LinkedIn.