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AI tools reshape global public service interactions

The Editors ·

AI tools reshape global public service interactions

A recent report highlights how artificial intelligence agents are generating significant increases in requests to public services worldwide. The piece notes that as AI makes it easier to fill forms and file complaints, agencies are seeing enormous jumps in applications. This trend is described by researcher Chris Schmitz as “agentic flooding,” a broader shift in how people interact with administrative systems.

In the United Kingdom, complaints to the housing ombudsman more than doubled since the introduction of ChatGPT, rising from 2,600 in 2022 to just over 7,000 last year. The United States’ Consumer Financial Protection Bureau saw 5x growth in complaints over the same period. Similar jumps were observed in Brazilian judicial petitions and German parliamentary petitions.

Schmitz is tracking this rise as part of a wider pattern. His paper examines 84 different cases of potential flooding across 11 jurisdictions. He finds broad evidence that AI tools are changing the nature of these interactions, looking at services ranging from welfare applications to official judicial appeals.

The report notes that most cases follow a similar arc, with submissions remaining roughly flat before 2022 and then rising at increasing speed as AI technology diffused. Most cases have not seen that growth slow down, suggesting it will likely keep rising for years to come. Schmitz’s paper stops short of saying AI is directly causing the surge due to methodological reasons.

For Schmitz, this represents a rare opportunity to remake social services for the AI era. He observes that people are finding out that this is something one can do, and it is incrementally getting easier. While some filings are clearly adversarial, others result from legitimate applicants using AI to file claims that would otherwise be abandoned.

Source: TechCrunch AI