On AI, government and the future of public services delivery

Why not being actively involved in AI carries risks for government agencies (and us all) and what to do about it. A few months ago I introduced Alexa into my home – the voice controlled AI system made by Amazon. For those of you living in the US, UK or Germany this may not seem a big feat, and perhaps even somewhat late given that Alexa was first introduced in 2014, but outside of its designated markets, Amazon is still actively discouraging people from using it. I cannot buy an Alexa device, such as the Echo, on Amazon as it won't ship to the Netherlands. And the app that is required to install and use it is geoblocked in my appstore – quite meticulously I might add. For a company who se main purpose is to sell stuff, I find this quite odd. Nonetheless I have been able to get it up and running, and my Echo Dot has re-joined the fast growing population of Alexa devices. Amazon announced a couple of weeks ago that Alexa devices such as the Echo Dot had been the best-sel ling products overall during last year's holiday season, selling more than 20 million of them.