Essential AI Skills for Government Literacy Programs

Oh, splendid. Governments are rolling out AI literacy programs. Because nothing says 'we have this under control' like teaching civil servants what 'responsible AI' means — as if the last decade of tech company hand-waving hasn't already taught us that 'responsible' is whatever the vendor's marketing department says it is. The GovTech article gushes about 'helping staff understand' AI, but conspicuously omits any details about what exactly these programs cover. Is it ethics? Prompt engineering? A PowerPoint slide that says 'don't be evil'?

One imagines the curriculum: 'Module 1: How to nod along when your vendor says the AI is unbiased. Module 2: How to write a justification for procurement when the system hallucinates a citizen's benefits. Module 3: The fine art of blaming the algorithm.' The articles mentions 'how AI can support their roles' — which in practice means 'how to do three people's work with one chat interface and then be audited by a model that flags your keystrokes.'

But hey, at least they're leading efforts. Leading them into the same fog every corporate training program has wandered into since the 1990s. The only real skill these government staffers will learn is how to nod knowingly when a consultant says 'we're building a governance framework.' The literacy program itself is a masterpiece of bureaucratic box-ticking: it teaches vague concepts with no measurable outcomes, so nobody can claim they weren't warned when the inevitable screw-up lands on page one. Cheers to progress, etc.