If AI Ran The Government, What We Could Do Differently
Government agencies all act like silos and little fiefdoms, never talking to each other and hoarding their data.
There are a lot of moving parts in Washington DC right now, and no matter which side of the political fence you're on, we all can agree on one thing: There's going to be a lot of changes to how our government functions in the future. According to Elon Musk, the person enacting many of these changes, AI is going to play a pretty big role. But how?
We may not know all the details yet, but I happen to know a thing or two about AI. So with that in mind, let's play a little thought experiment. If I were using AI to run the government, how would I do it differently?
The US government is huge, there's no doubt about that. Some aspects of the system control our everyday lives, and others operate seamlessly in the background that we never hear about. However, all you have to do to show inefficiencies in the government is ask a friend about their last visit to the DMV. Their answer is always going to either start or end with a frustrated sigh.
Part of the problem with government agencies is they all act like silos and little fiefdoms, never talking to each other and hoarding their data. And if they do, sometimes it's catty and petty, and things don't get done.
Could we cut out that garbage? Absolutely. Let's have some Connected Conversations™.
What's that? It's when we cut out the middlemen and women who stand in our way and get right to the source. AI can help us do that — whether it's with meat-space people or just data.
I tried to do this 15 years ago, working as a contractor for NOAA. We wanted to connect fish data, marine transportation data, and temperature data, and we didn't even have AI at the time. We were trying to find correlations between the three, and getting that information was a nightmare—like going to the DMV every day.
Connected Conversations™ change that. We can marry the data and see what comes up. We can talk to the people we need to talk to through the right channels without worrying about what department they work in. It would be so much faster and more efficient, and isn't that the point?
Of course, security is a big issue, too. We've got to keep this information tight so it doesn't leak. Nobody can see the temperature of the water in the Pacific Ocean at this longitude and latitude. Think of the children!
This means locking down the data, and that absolutely has to be built into these systems. In fact, it makes it run better. Pump the data in and keep it anonymized. We know it's legit because it comes from the US Government, and we can use that information to make determinations.
Say we needed all that NOAA data, but it also would help to have some non-classified info from the CIA or NSA about pirates like you saw in Captain Phillips. Could that play a role? We could know if we had the information.
Should AI play a role in public policy? I certainly see a world where that happens. If we have the data and access to it, the AI can do a lot of powerful things. It's just a matter of how we use it and how things are executed. I've got more thoughts on this, including why we need anonymized data and a permissioned ecosystem.
Speaking of, I also talk a lot about that whole process in my new book, The AI Ecosystems Revolution. It's available for preorder on Amazon right now and comes out April 29, 2025. I'm so excited for you to get a chance to read it.
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