Artificial Intelligence Application and Ethical Risk Governance in Public Decision Making

Abstract

The marriage of Artificial Intelligence with public administration has completely reshaped how decisions are made in the government sector, opening the door to levels of efficiency and predictive accuracy people have never seen before while enabling policies to be crafted based on solid data. That said, this tech revolution is not all sunshine and rainbows—it throws some serious ethical curveballs that could undermine the very bedrock of public governance. This paper takes a deep dive into how AI is being put to work in public decision-making processes, examining everything from policy modeling and resource distribution to reading the public’s mood and automating compliance checks. At the same time, people are putting the microscope on the sticky ethical questions that come with the territory, including built-in biases in algorithms, the mystery of black-box systems, confusion about who is really responsible when things go wrong, privacy concerns, and the risk of losing sight of the human values when people are too focused on cold logic. To tackle these head-on, people are proposing a robust ethical governance blueprint that calls for thorough vetting processes before implementation, complete transparency in operations, clear guidelines on when humans should remain in the loop, ironclad data privacy measures, and systems that bring input from all parties to the table. By walking the tightrope between tech innovation and ethical responsibility, government officials can tap into AI’s potential to boost public good without compromising fairness, accountability, or the public’s best interests.