A public-services think tank in the UK called “Reform” is suggesting that thousands of public sector jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence.

Reform, a public-services think tank, suggests that 90 per cent of Whitehall’s 137,000 administrative staff could be replaced with “artificially intelligent chatbots” by 2030, saving £2.6 billion a year.

The ‘Work in progress’ report also calls for smart machines and autonomous robots to do the job of 250,000 public-sector workers.

Anyone who has ever had to contact the IRS to clear up an error on their part will probably admit that trying that strategy here in the United States may not be an improvement but it probably wouldn’t make things any worse.

It’s really not a bad idea in some cases but in a country with nationalized healthcare it could be a nightmare that separates doctor and patient not only with bureaucrats but with actual machines.

It says 90,000 NHS administrators and 24,000 GP receptionists could be let go under the “radical” change to public services.

The report quotes evidence that estimates 30 per cent of nurses’ activities could be automated, and a similar proportion for doctors in some specialities.

It comes after the NHS announced that patients will be assessed by robots under a controversial 111 scheme to use “artificial intelligence” to ease pressures on Accident & Emergency units.

If you need robots to free up doctors, you really need more doctors. To get more doctors you need to make becoming a doctor worthwhile which is the opposite of what government run medicine does.

I’m all for automating routine tasks. In some cases communicating with a machine might actually be more helpful than talking to a person. But if artificial intelligence is going start “doctoring” people because there aren’t enough doctors to go around, that’s one more argument for doing anything we can to keep healthcare a private sector endeavor wherever possible.