Don't Automate the Human Out of the Loop

Public employees aren't behind on AI. Adoption has more than doubled in two years, and across the Northwest, people use these tools every day. The real disruption is quieter. As AI gets reliable enough to lean on, we stop checking its work, and the human capacities on which public service runs begin to fade. Researchers have called this "quiet atrophy," the process by which expertise erodes while outputs still look fine. So, an agency can appear to be working well while growing brittle underneath. AI is meant to augment our judgment, not replace it. Oregon and Washington have written the same line into their AI policies: "a human stays in the loop." But staying in the loop only counts if that human is still thinking. My aim is to leave the room with this: the future of public service belongs to those who stay fully human in the loop, keeping their judgment sharp precisely as AI grows more capable, because that is what keeps public service both trustworthy and fair.

Coming soon.