Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.telegraph.co.uk
Civil servants are embarrassed to use AI at work because they think bosses will look down on them, a government report has found.
A report into a trial of AI tools at the Department for Business and Trade found that staff felt they would not be taken seriously if they used the technology.
It comes as ministers seek to boost productivity in the civil service by getting staff to make greater use of AI.
Hundreds of civil servants were given access to a Whitehall-built AI system called Redbox that could summarise documents, answer questions and transcribe meetings.
However, a report into its usage within the department found that civil servants were unwilling to include disclaimers in their work revealing they had used AI.
“A barrier reported by interviewees to using an AI disclaimer was other people’s perception of it,” the report said.
“This is perceived to be negative and some participants reported that it would affect their credibility and the way that their work is perceived by others, especially by seniors.
One civil servant was quoted saying: “You know you’d be looked down on as you’re using the shortcut … but very soon everybody will be using this as default.”
Labour has said it wants AI to be widespread in the civil service in an attempt to boost productivity. In August, the Government gave consultants a £456m contract to train staff on the use of AI.
However, the research has cast doubt on how useful civil servants are finding the tools.
The DBT report, which monitored a subset of all Redbox users across Whitehall, found that it saved time on some tasks such as creating research but other tasks such as analysing data took longer with the AI tool.
Seven in 10 civil servants said they expected it to make them better at their job before the trial, but after using the tool only half said it had.
A survey of private sector workers by Deloitte last month found that a quarter believed there was a stigma attached to using AI at work, while many thought using it would convince their boss that they could be replaced by AI.
The Redbox system was shut down at the end of last year, with civil servants now using commercial AI tools from Microsoft and other companies.
Last week, ministers were forced to change draft guidance about using AI after it emerged that the Government was advising civil servants to limit their use of the technology to save the environment.
Draft guidance had told civil servants to use low-cost versions of the tools and to “only use AI when needed”, adding: “It is important you use it efficiently to reduce the environmental impact.”
The advice also told civil servants not to say “thank you” to their chatbots. The advice was removed last week, with Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, saying he wanted to increase its use across the public sector.
