Bob wants to replace you with AI
At the same time that Washington is looking down the barrel of more layoffs, Washington agencies are trialing artificial intelligence tools. Agentic AI is down the road. I can see the writing on the wall. We will layoff hundreds or thousands of employees, then the dramatic increases in productivity from AI will pick up the slack.
Things I've heard: Microsoft has met with the Governors Office and agency leadership about artificial intelligence. He likes the idea of increasing productivity, especially given tight budgets. But he doesn't seem very eager to do anything to slow down the impacts from job loss or pester the legislature to find sources of new revenue by fixing the tax system.
I'm feeling very pessimistic about the next 1-2 years.
Edit: many in this thread have used aging and poorly executed IT as an example of why we wouldn't be able to adopt AI. I think that is a poorly thought out example, since AI is especially well suited to working with technology and writing code, that is actually where it will make the most impact. I work at Ecology and I just sat in on a presentation about an AI use case where one of the developers used AI to substitute for a Business Analyst role while hiring was suspended. With a little tweaking he was able to make it work for his needs. If I was that newly hired Business Analyst I would be a little worried.