Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

LLM Other LLM Agent Other Agents AI Safety / AI Ethics AFBD EVA
2026年08月17日
人工智能代理正使公众更便捷地与政府互动,例如协助其申领福利、理解复杂政策,并表达自身意见。尽管提升服务可及性具有积极意义,但由此引发的需求激增却可能给准备不足的政府服务带来压力。我们将此类需求激增现象称为“政府服务的代理式泛滥”(简称“泛滥”),并就此提出三项研究贡献: 第一,基于我们收集整理的涵盖11个司法管辖区、共计84起潜在泛滥案例的数据集,我们推断,“泛滥”现象当前很可能已广泛发生,且主要由大语言模型(LLM)以低成本生成文本所驱动; 第二,我们评估了哪些政府服务最易遭受“泛滥”冲击。为此,我们构建了一套风险矩阵,用于系统分析某项服务暴露于泛滥风险之下的程度,并指出:短期内风险最高的服务,往往是那些兼具较高经济吸引力与较高操作复杂性的服务; 第三,我们梳理并绘制出政府应对“泛滥”的可能响应路径图谱。既有实践表明,这些响应措施总体上足以遏制大多数泛滥情形;然而,其中部署速度最快的一类措施——例如增设费用等增加使用摩擦的手段——往往以牺牲公共服务的公平可及性为代价。有鉴于此,本文最后提出若干近期可行的行动建议,旨在帮助政府在不触发上述公平性权衡的前提下,有效缓解“泛滥”问题。
AI agents are making it easier for the public to interact with government, such as by helping them apply for benefits, understand complex policies, and make their opinions heard. Although improving service accessibility is beneficial, any resulting surges in demand could strain unprepared government services. We term such surges agentic flooding of government services ("flooding") and provide three contributions. First, based on a collected dataset of 84 potential cases of flooding across 11 jurisdictions, we posit that flooding is likely occurring widely today, mostly through large language models (LLMs) generating text cheaply. Second, we evaluate what services are most exposed to flooding. We develop a risk matrix to analyze a service's exposure, and suggest that near-term risk is highest for financially attractive, but complex services. Finally, we map possible government responses to flooding. Precedent suggests these responses will likely be sufficient to stop most cases of flooding, but the fastest to deploy - friction-inducing measures like fees - often trade off equitable access to public services. Accordingly, we close by recommending near-term actions that may allow governments to mitigate flooding without invoking this trade-off.
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