Report: Nearly All States Have Piloted AI but Value Is Unclear - govtech.com

Ah, the government has once again discovered the joy of buying new gadgets without checking if they work. Code for America's 2026 Government AI Landscape Assessment reveals that nearly all states have dabbled in AI pilots, which is the public sector equivalent of a teenager downloading every app on the Play Store. The catch? Very few have thought to ask whether any of this actually delivers value. Because why measure impact when you can issue a press release about a task force?

The report notes 'progress' through executive orders, legislation, task forces, and partnerships — the four horsemen of the bureaucratic apocalypse. Each one sounds important, each one generates a PDF, and each one conveniently avoids the awkward question: is this making anyone's life better? One imagines a state official proudly pointing at a chatbot that hallucinates tax advice and calling it 'innovation.' Meanwhile, the actual public value remains as unclear as the AI's reasoning chain.

So here we are, 50 states racing to pilot AI without a common yardstick, all while Code for America politely points out the emperor has no clothes. The report is a masterpiece of understatement, concluding that 'value is unclear' — a phrase that could serve as the epitaph for most government IT projects. Still, at least the task forces will have plenty of meetings to attend, and the partners will have something to bill for. Progress!