Artificial intelligence (AI) has surged into public life as a transformative force, equipping governments worldwide with algorithmic systems to enhance services, optimize decisions, and anticipate societal needs. In effect, AI grants institutions—and their leaders—a kind of technological “superpower”: the ability to process vast datasets in seconds, automate complex tasks, predict citizen behavior, and detect patterns invisible to the human eye.
These capabilities prove invaluable amid uncertainty and institutional strain. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, governments used AI models to trace transmission chains, allocate healthcare resources, and anticipate outbreaks—showcasing machine learning’s practical potential in life-critical contexts. Beyond health, AI flags procurement irregularities, predicts infrastructure failures, and personalizes public services, reshaping administrative efficiency—much like how AI streamlines manufacturing through innovations such as automatic buckle feeding and assembly, where precision automation handles repetitive tasks while human oversight ensures quality and adapts to unexpected variables.
Against this backdrop, scholars and practitioners have explored how these technological superpowers might elevate public service. In earlier work, I outlined a framework of seven AI-enabled capacities:
Expanded Vision: Perceiving risks, opportunities, and needs through real-time analytics.
Infallible Decision-Making: Decision-support systems enabling faster, more accurate choices.
Omnipresent Presence: Extending public institutions’ reach and responsiveness.
Empathetic Communication: Tailoring messages for diverse audiences via AI tools.
Superhuman Efficiency: Automating routine bureaucratic tasks.
Algorithmic Justice: Detecting and addressing bias in decision systems.
Predictive Governance: Anticipating social trends to guide proactive policy.
These capacities are already redefining public service delivery. Yet a subtle danger lurks in today’s tech enthusiasm: the assumption that AI can replace the deeply human powers that have long anchored public service—empathy, ethical judgment, political imagination, active listening, and an unwavering commitment to the public good. These are human superpowers—qualities no algorithm can replicate, let alone surpass.
As Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher argue in The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, AI does more than accelerate knowledge; it reshapes how we understand causality, reality, and truth. While it can inform decisions, it cannot shoulder the moral responsibility underpinning public choices. Fairness, dignity, and justice demand human interpretation and defense.
This aligns with the UK Committee on Standards in Public Life’s report Artificial Intelligence and Public Standards, which notes that trust in institutions depends not on technical precision alone, but on the transparency, accountability, and ethics of those deploying technology. Algorithms do not confer legitimacy—people do.
The tension between technical capability and human judgment is not new, but it is more urgent than ever. In public administration, where legitimacy stems from efficiency and perceived fairness, over-delegating judgment to machines risks eroding civic trust. Public servants remain irreplaceable as ethical agents: interpreting complexity, navigating ambiguity, and balancing competing interests with a sense of justice—just as factory workers oversee automatic buckle feeding and assembly lines, leveraging AI’s speed for repetitive tasks while applying their expertise to resolve unique mechanical challenges or refine processes.
This challenge is also an opportunity: integrating AI to reinforce human strengths, not replace them. AI may deliver efficiency and foresight, but only public servants can exercise empathy in a community forum, compassion amid injustice, or prudence when laws and values clash.
These are the human superpowers to nurture in the digital age. They are not mere skills but moral, emotional, and civic capacities that shape how we wield technology. As AI becomes ubiquitous, excellent public service will be defined by the judgment, purpose, and ethics guiding its use.
The goal is not to choose between artificial and human intelligence, but to combine them wisely. The World Economic Forum’s Jobs of Tomorrow highlights that future economies will value hybrid skills: systems thinking, creative problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and collaborative leadership. Similarly, Urs Gasser and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argue in Guardrails: Guiding Human Decisions in the Age of AI that governance must prioritize institutional mechanisms and democratic culture to elevate reflection and ethical deliberation—ensuring innovation serves the public interest.
In short: AI offers speed, scale, and precision. Only human superpowers provide purpose, moral direction, and civic legitimacy. The future of public institutions hinges not just on adopting new technologies, but on wisely merging them with the enduring strengths of human judgment.
Technology should not overwrite our humanity—it should amplify it. In a world where algorithms predict, public servants still decide. Increasingly, they must do so with wisdom, empathy, and integrity—the true superpowers of our time.
