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Jodie Carson is a Professor of Strategic Policy in Practice at Ulster University After a brief reprieve resulting from stabilisation funding, internal NICS efficiency drives and a fairly generous recent UK Budget allocation, Northern Ireland’s public finances are once again on an unsustainable footing with some £800m in-year spending over-commitment. This is largely attributable to overcommitments within the Departments for Health and Education, but has wide-reaching implications for the Executive as a whole. It is highly unlikely that monitoring rounds will reveal substantial surplus funds from other Departments, so it will be a real challenge for the Executive to deliver a balanced Budget. As it stands, public service delivery in Northern Ireland therefore appears increasingly unaffordable. The current level of demand for services, including significant components of pent-up demand reflected in waiting lists, combined with the costs of delivery, are contributing to an expensive and corrosive spiral in service delivery outcomes. As a consequence of this cycle, despite the forthcoming opportunity for a three-year Budget and the potential this offers for a more strategic approach to spending, we will likely instead remain in fire-fighting mode. We aren’t adequately investing in our future and there are mounting costs of policy short-termism and inaction. In light of the wider global economic, geopolitical and fiscal context, and the potential for moral hazard from repeated financial bailouts, UK Treasury will not take a sympathetic view to our plight. It is important that this realism is recognised – this is our problem to solve, and we must get creative. It is in this context that AI becomes so pertinent for both the public and private sectors in NI – particularly in light of our particular productivity gap. As challenging as it is in the aforementioned financial context, we must approach the adoption of AI from an Invest-to-Save angle and this may mean we need to move away from our particular culture of risk aversion and instead foster a sense innovation within our public sector, within appropriate guardrails of course. Caution is not serving us if it results in delay, inaction and further erosion in public service outcomes. Undoubtedly, AI will not serve as a silver-bullet for resolution of all our problems, and there are areas of hype and the prospect of some degree of correction in what some describe as the ‘AI bubble’. Society will need to learn and adapt as we engage with this new technology, as has been the case in previous technological revolutions. What appears, in my view, to be different in the case of AI is that, even should the bubble burst (and this is not an inevitability – it is possible that we are currently in fact underestimating its potential), society may be nonetheless better-off as a consequence. A potential financial market correction, whilst painful, would not negate the improvements that AI is facilitating in the delivery of various public service outcomes. A UK Government report earlier this year identified the potential for £43bn annual savings from the full adoption of digital and AI solutions, which would correspond to just over £1bn for Northern Ireland. In terms of improved outcomes, AI is currently enabling improved decision-making within the UK Government, due to enhanced data analysis capacity. Earlier detection of eye conditions enables associated prevention of sight loss, and this alone is anticipated to save the UK NHS up to £290m per year. Other applications include the monitoring of patient welfare within social care to identify need for assistance in advance of a crisis taking place, and ‘smart sewers’ are being used by UK water utilities to identify pollutants and minimise environmental impacts of pollutive events. Further afield, Denmark and Singapore are implementing the use of AI within smart grids to predict electricity demand and optimise renewable energy, enabling more stable energy systems, lower carbon emissions and efficiency gains in municipal operations. Nordic schools have trialled AI-based tutoring systems to enable the personalisation of education, resulting in improved test outcomes for lower-attaining students. These impacts have the potential to cut across a range of policy areas in Northern Ireland, improving educational, energy, environmental and health outcomes, all of which link back to our economy and overall productivity levels. It would be unrealistic to think that AI will resolve all our problems, but what is clear is that we have much to gain and little to lose from being an early and innovative adopter – and the window of opportunity is closing.
