Toward a Non-Dispositive, Human-First Agenda for Public Sector AI

The current era of artificial intelligence (“AI”) has engendered profound industrial transformation. Firms from social media to consumer finance are inextricably integrating AI into their core operations. Meanwhile, regulators and civil society grow increasingly wary of what they perceive as unaccountable algorithms deciding what media the public should see, what products they should be offered, and what contractual terms they deserve. And as governments begin to look toward AI to better serve citizens, such concerns translate readily — and often in intensified form — to the public sector. Governmental entities that focus on relentless automation, skilled workforce replacement, and metric optimization in their AI development agendas risk producing the same unaccountable outcomes as those already observed in the wild. But the public sector is not bound by the same imperatives driving private-sector AI development. Governmental entities have the option to adopt a non-dispositive, human-first AI agenda. This agenda is deliberate in scope but no less ambitious than those of private-sector AI pioneers. It recognizes the simultaneous limitations of standalone “black-box” AI and the incredible potential of AI technology to empower humans. It does not champion the deployment of closed-loop AI systems in dispositional contexts. But neither does it cabin AI’s role to mere toy problems. Rather, this agenda calls for the measured integration of AI capabilities into human-d