AI will soon replace hundreds of thousands of public sector workers – and that's a good thing

Last month, while commuters suffered, Jeremy Hunt announced that the NHS will work with three artificial intelligence (AI) companies to deliver health advice over the telephone in London, Yorkshire and the West Midlands. AI is improving to the level that it can understand complex areas such as medical diagnosis as well as humans can. Meanwhile, HMRC has been able to reduce its administrative staff by a third over the past decade, with great savings to the taxpayer, thanks to its online self-assessment service. Crucially, this also means a better service: completing tax returns on the internet may not yet be exactly a joy, but it is still a huge advance on previous days of paper returns and letters lost in the post. My think tank, Reform, has just finished a study which suggests the wider public sector can follow suit.