A.I. Powered Civil Servants Could Take Over the Government

Until robots reach some kind of full consciousness, nobody feels bad about not paying them. That's why austerity-focused governments are on a collision course with replacing civil servants with automated workers to cut costs: We're talking robo-cops, robo-firefighters, robo-mailmen. If artificial intelligence gets good enough to take private-sector jobs, there's little to stop it from driving a technological revolution that could leave government services unrecognizable. For the past six years, the British Conservative Party has been pursuing an austerity program to cut the deficit, slashing funds for local services and reducing staff numbers in the public sector. A recent report, published in October by Oxford University and Deloitte, suggests the government could go much further: over 850,000 public sector jobs could be lost to automation by the year 2030.