In an age when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new frontier for businesses, the Federal Government has treated 5,800 public servants as ‘guinea pigs’ to see what happens to productivity. And feedback from the world’s biggest AI trial was very positive.

The AFR’s Edmund Tadros reported the trial that used the Microsoft Copilot product had the following results:

1. The public servants said it saved them an average of an hour a day, including the time it took to check its output for accuracy.
2. It boosted productivity for simple tasks, such as searching for and summarising information, analysing preliminary data and writing or reviewing programming code.
3. In some cases, it allowed them to gain access to documents “that staff had not classified or stored appropriately”!
4. Word and Teams were enhanced because of AI but Excel disappointed the group in the trial.
5. 75% who had three or more forms of training were confident using Copilot.
6. Those with one form of training were 28% less confident with the use of AI.

Generally, organisations want AI to provide workers the prompts to boost productivity and help create automated tasks. The trial was driven by the Digital Transformation Agency, which is an agency of the Government to assist the transformation of digital services in the public sector, making them simple, clear and fast for people to use.

The DTA says it’s taking a cautious approach to the use of AI, especially as the scandalous robo-debt scheme was based on AI processes.

Wikipedia reminds is that the “Robo-debt scheme was an unlawful method of automated debt assessment and recovery implemented under the Liberal-National Coalition governments of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, and Scott Morrison, and employed by the Australian government agency Services Australia as part of its Centrelink payment compliance program. “The scheme has been the subject of considerable controversy, having been criticised by media, academics, advocacy groups, and politicians due to allegations of false or incorrectly calculated debt notices being issued, concerns over impacts on the physical and mental health of debt notice recipients, and questions around the lawfulness of the scheme…”

Tadros says the private sector is more fully embracing AI with the finance sector exploring the productivity pay offs for their operations.

Whether we like it or not, AI is coming. And while there will be productivity gains ahead, there’ll also be negatives of a robo-debt kind and it will more than likely happen in the private sector.

The ACCC will undoubtedly have to deal with businesses who will use AI to cut costs and raise profits, but the consumer will end up being screwed until safeguards are put in place.

It happened when we all embraced email and gave away our personal information online too easily. Then suddenly, we were bombarded with ads.

Yep, AI is new frontier in the brave, new tech world we live in today.