AI: Applications Surge in Public Services

Organizations in the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, and Germany are facing a wave of requests facilitated by AI tools. A researcher documents 84 cases across 11 jurisdictions, viewing this as both a capacity challenge and an opportunity to rethink administrative pathways.

Continuous Rising Burdens, Compared to "Bug Bounty"

Bug bounty programs were overwhelmed last year by reports generated by LLMs, which rarely contained significant security issues but still needed to be reviewed, consuming resources. Most cases studied by Chris Schmitz show no slowdown in the growth of submissions, suggesting that this increase may continue. In this context, public services may have to handle five times more applicants with unchanged budgets. The new requests include both adversarial approaches and legitimate inquiries, while some actors consider them to be AI-generated spam.

Marked Increases in the UK, the US, Brazil, and Germany

In the United Kingdom, the number of complaints addressed to the housing ombudsman more than doubled, rising from 2,600 in 2022 to just over 7,000 the following year. In the United States, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported a fivefold increase in complaints during the same period. Comparable increases have been observed regarding court petitions in Brazil and parliamentary petitions in Germany.

Spread of Tools: From ChatGPT 3.5 to a Photo Analyzed by Claude

Chris Schmitz attributes the rise in usage to improved user skills and greater availability of tools. Where it was previously necessary to gather significant context and precisely formulate a request to ChatGPT 3.5, it has now become possible to paste or photograph a letter in an application like Claude and receive a satisfactory response on the first try. This accessibility is transforming the way forms are filled out and complaints are submitted.

Towards Rethought Services to Reduce Administrative Burden

The services examined range from social assistance requests to judicial appeals, all accessible online via an AI assistant. Some applicants previously refrained from asserting their rights due to the administrative burden, and AI can alleviate this load. Chris Schmitz asserts that the majority of new requests come from real individuals with legitimate rights. He sees an opportunity to rethink these pathways for the AI era, even though the task remains significant and still largely unaddressed. According to him, defining the "right version" of a process is essential; the experience of filing taxes with ChatGPT illustrates a possible aid, and it may be time to deeply rethink these procedures.

Method and Scope: 84 Cases, 11 Jurisdictions, Caution on Causality

Chris Schmitz studied 84 cases across 11 jurisdictions and highlighted changes in how citizens interact with public services. For methodological reasons, she does not claim that AI is directly responsible for the increase in new applicants. In most cases, volumes were stable before 2022 and then grew as AI became more widespread. This work is set to be presented next month at the AI Ethics and Society conference and is part of what Schmitz calls "agentic flooding."