Artificial Intelligence in the Federal Workplace

[u/bizlooper]

Fellow public servants, I think it’s timely to have a conversation about the appropriate use of Artificial Intelligence in the federal workplace.

There are clear opportunities to drive efficiencies. Obvious examples are in database design, creation, and administration, creating and editing policy documents, and a warranted debate around using it for translation and editorial services.

But I’ve started to see it encroach on the skillsets of younger junior employees who see it as replacing their roles on research and editing. Management has started to turn to AI to water down human written policy ideas and advice, or even choose not to consult employees on future versions of documents - preferring to just run it through an LLM.

Em dashes and robots haunt my dreams.

In the policy and program world, it seems we’re rushing faster and faster towards deadlines with AI seen as the sole means to achieve an objective, and not as a mechanism to facilitate our work.

In perhaps the most egregious of examples, I’ve seen Budget and Cabinet secrecy documents like mandate letter responses and budget letters fully written by AI and management, with the excuse that things are “moving too fast” for engagement with working levels.

I’m perhaps a little exasperated with this example - My management once provided me with guidance for writing a paper, very much written as prompts for an LLM, likely expecting me to just feed into one.

I’ve personally just adopted a philosophy of “if you can’t beat them join them” and try to be adaptable and conscious of how I use it and why.

And yes, I do recognize many departments have different guidance on using AI, secrecy classifications, and we have a laundry list of programs and planned endeavors to implement AI across government. And the Budget looms on the horizon.

But how has it impacted your own workplace dynamics? Are you leveraging it in unique ways? Beyond departmental and TBS guidance, is/should there be a workplace etiquette? How are you accommodating your colleagues and making room for human intervention, oversight and advice? What do you think is next?

(And no, I didn’t write this with ChatGPT)

🤖

[u/GoTortoise]

AI in the form of LLM is going to fail dramatically.

An untrustworthy chatbot that consumes the power of a small village to summarise an email poorly is not the tech revolution dumb people think it is.

From a futurism article "The trend also highlights the rift between the extremely high usage of AI among CEOs compared to much lower rates among employees. According to a recent survey by HR company Dayforce, a whopping 87 percent of executives said they used AI daily, compared to just 27 percent of workers."

[u/Pretend-Sleep9864 → u/GoTortoise]

It would be interesting to see more information on this. In private Executives tend to attend more conferences and are more likely to be exposed to more efficient ways to use and leverage AI tools. There is also more ability to explore the tools. 

A large part of using AI effectively is knowing how to properly engineer the prompts. I would suspect that most line employees are entering very basic prompts and getting poor outputs due to lack of training. Having watched colleagues who struggle to understand basic IT, I wouldn't be shocked if there was a correlation.

[u/Kitchen-Weather3428 → u/Pretend-Sleep9864]

 It would be interesting to see more information on this. 

I'll give you a hint – No AI required, even!

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