AI and Public Services: a Challenging Relationship Between Benefits, Risks and Compliance with Unavoidable Principles

The adoption of AI solutions in public services generates savings, enhances quality of services, allows to reach larger production scales and, by eliminating human errors, is able to give greater guarantees to citizens. In particular, the study intends to focus on the improvements that can be realized with the help of AI in the relations between levels of government and above all in the numerous relationships between public authorities and private subjects. From this last point of view, it appears essential on the one hand that in the use of AI public administration does not deviate from its inherent principles and on the other hand that citizens consider the use of new technologies in the public sector to be reliable. Despite the many potential benefits of AI, there are also numerous risks, which must be addressed first of all in order to ensure respect for democratic values and human rights, while there is still a lack of uniform legislation in relation to the use of AI in the public sector. In this still unclear but constantly evolving framework the use of AI in public administration raises many other issues, including its compliance with the unavoidable founding principles of public service.