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New post: "Drowning in slop" Large parts of the state are being increasingly overwhelmed with complaints, appeals, objections.... written by AI. It's gumming up every process. Britain is particularly vulnerable. How bad has it got and what can we do about it? samf.substack.com/p/drowning-i...

Having talked to dozens of public servants about this, I suspect a more fundamental rethink may be required.

A shift of default public service service design from 'declarative claim' to 'proactive confirmation', whereby gov knows enough about you (with consent) to make you an offer proactively not demand you make a claim via declaration. Tax returns heading this way already.

The right to 'an appeal' will get severely curtailed since AI will appeal by default. Those appeals that remain will require payment or other friction (lawyers etc). This will be bad and will cause much suffering.

Putting 'humans back in the loop' might help for a few months, but AI is not just hitting the online channel. AI generated conversational phone calls are a thing, and will only get better. And who's to say that they might not provide a reasonable adjustment to a disabled individual?

The EU's AI law requires AI companies to watermark AI generated text. OpenAI Very begrudgingly agreed this week.. They all hate it (liability), but were we in the EU it would give options to explore. Although the open models won't use it, so...