Brits fear AI will strip the human touch from public services
- Reference: 1772881267
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/03/07/ai_public_sector_poll/
- Source link:
More respondents saw risks from AI than benefits, with 51 percent thinking it may lead to reduced human contact, 50 percent fearing job losses from automation, 47 percent concerned about over-reliance on technology reducing human oversight, and 46 percent worried about privacy and data security.
UK names Barnsley as first Tech Town to see whether AI can fix... well, anything [1]READ MORE
Fewer people saw opportunities from AI, with a third saying AI could free staff time by reducing administrative work and the same percentage seeing it as a way to let officials handle more information.
It is an open question as to whether politicians will use AI to give staff more time rather than employ fewer of them. Last year's spending review set targets to reduce administrative spending by 16 percent by 2029-30, with [2]more than 8,500 civil servants expected to depart over the next year.
Overall, 37 percent of those responding to the Ipsos survey saw AI as a risk to public services compared with 23 percent seeing it as an opportunity. Those aged 55 to 75 were most pessimistic, with four in ten seeing risks and just 14 percent seeing opportunities, but even 16 to 34-year-olds were split 34 percent to 31 percent in favor of risks.
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The research found many feel digitization has made no difference to public services and in some cases more feel it has made things worse than better.
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Asked how many times they have to repeat themselves when dealing with public services, almost a third felt digital technology had a negative impact, 36 percent said no difference, and a fifth were positive. More people were positive than negative on digitization's impact on receiving information on public services, booking appointments, and final outcomes, however.
The survey found the public was pessimistic about the future of public services, with 54 percent thinking the National Health Service will get worse in the next few years compared with 10 percent expecting it to improve. It also found that 38 percent of respondents think the UK should aim for lower taxes and borrowing, even if that means less public spending, but 44 percent expect these to increase.
[6]AI doctor's assistant is easily swayed to change prescriptions, give bad medical advice
[7]AI chatbots waffle on GOV.UK queries, then get facts wrong when told to zip it
[8]6,000 execs struggle to find the AI productivity boom
[9]UK government insiders say AI datacenters may be a pricey white elephant
Ipsos carried out the research online with 5,847 adults aged 16 to 75 in December 2025 for public services think tank Re:State and consultancy Deloitte's annual [10]State of the State report .
The report also drew on interviews with 118 public sector leaders as well as suppliers. Many were enthusiastic about AI projects and pilots and the need to scale these up, with some using personal AI accounts at work.
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"I pay £20 for my own ChatGPT account and I use it all the time," said a director at a combined authority. "My boss doesn't like it, but are we supposed to trade in laptops for typewriters?"
Not everyone is on board with the AI revolution. One senior civil servant said: "None of the AI case studies turn out to be as good as the press release, and not a single one will transform government's cost base... There's a naive techno-utopianism in Whitehall." ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/03/barnsley_ai_town/
[2] https://www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/nao-guidance-government-exits-and-redundancies/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aaxZruI0TcvP7AoCm79IyQAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aaxZruI0TcvP7AoCm79IyQAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aaxZruI0TcvP7AoCm79IyQAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/04/ai_doctor_easily_swayed/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/19/chatbots_too_chatty_government/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/ai_productivity_survey/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/12/uk_gov_ai_datacenters/
[10] https://re-state.co.uk/publications/the-state-of-the-state-2026/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aaxZruI0TcvP7AoCm79IyQAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
We've Been Hearing About Alienation For YEARS Now........
......hasn't SA Mathieson got the email?
AI will only INCREASE the alienation which we've already got!!!!!
The idea in this article is that alienation IS A NEW THING........
The idea in this article is that AI will be the start of alienation.....
......instead of just being MORE OF THE SAME!!!!
What planet do ElReg journalists live on? Clearly not the one I'm on!!!
worried that AI will dehumanize public services
Even further.
Re: worried that AI will dehumanize public services
On the nail. The game seems to be to create the illusion of services while making them effectively inaccessible and it started long before AI.
In my region, for example, the NHS has "made it easier" to access both physiotherapy and mental health services by allowing people to self-refer, avoiding the GP bottleneck. What happens in practice is that people get screened out using much more rigorous criteria than their GP would have applied so that fewer people actually get near a therapist. My local mental health trust was at one stage returning "mailbox full" messages to distressed people trying to access talking therapies.
Before the telephone number is withdrawn again, I finally managed to get through to HMRC as I was overdue a simple assessment. It turned out they'd miscalculated based on incomplete data but they couldn't take the correct figures while I was speaking to them, they had to be sent by post and it wasn't possible to say when they'd be processed. An accountant tells me they're getting projected response times from HMRC of 15 months to relatively simple tax enquiries.
Unfortunately, AI is merely another distraction from fixing what is actually wrong.
Re: worried that AI will dehumanize public services
Personally I'd much rather deal with an AI than many of the public servants I meet who are bored, jaded, burned out, and inefficient. That's before we get to stroppy, surely, and moody.
There's a reason most of us keep our interactions with the state to a bare minimum.
not a single one will transform government's cost base...
" not a single one will transform government's cost base... There's a naive techno-utopianism in Whitehall. "
Possibly truer that " There's a naive techno-utopianism in Westminster " with a large helping of desperation from a typical UK government totally out of its depth trying to deal with 21st century problems with a 19th century mindset and matching administrative apparatus.
You cannot entirely fault civil servants - senior or other otherwise - for drinking the ministers' lemonade (even if the wiser heads unobserved tip that hemlock into the potted aspidistra); it's either that or the labour exchange and the joys of Universal Credit.
From experience it is shit
The better-half ordered a new desk from on online supplier which arrived minus some hardware. She rang the company and had to endure an ai slave. Two days later a complete new desk arrived and a week after that a third turned up. We've checked credit card statements and haven't been charged for the two new ones and guess what...trying to return them caused the ai to offer to despatch replacements.
I haven't laughed so much for ages.
Computer says 'No'
Please wait, your call is important to us
That sort of human contact?
Re: Please wait, your call is important to us
Honestly, sitting on hold to talk to a person is generally preferable to dealing with AI slop.
And it's not like that's gone away, you just have to force your way through the AI gatekeeper first, then you get to sit on hold.
Aliienation
Required reading: Franz Kafka -- The Castle. (Might be downloadable at https://dn790009.ca.archive.org/0/items/castle01kafk/castle01kafk.pdf)
Dealing with "Customer Service is already all too often a Kafkaesque experience. I can't imagine that AI will make it any better.
Moreover it will probably degenerate eventually into a "My AI will work out something with your AI" situation often yielding truly absurd results.
Touch
It's not about human touch, but competence.
Your phone can be answered by a human paid less a month that you spend on your morning coffee, sitting in some hell hole on the other side of the world, who will read you templates based on loosely matched keywords they think they heard.
Exactly
None of the AI case studies turn out to be as good as the press release
For example https://retractionwatch.com/2026/03/06/librarian-finds-preposterous-number-of-fake-references-in-paper-from-springer-nature-journal/