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Having talked to dozens of public servants about this, I suspect a more fundamental rethink may be required.

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Arguably this surfaces a dystopic current reality, whereby those most in need of public services are most likely to be excluded by the friction employed by individual services to 'manage demand'? Those vulnerable people with their unmet needs don't disappear... cue displacement demand redux.

A shift of default public service service design from 'declarative claim' to 'proactive confirmation', whereby gov knows enough about you (with consent) to make you an offer proactively not demand you make a claim via declaration. Tax returns heading this way already.

Any remaining policy grey areas or space left for judgement of individual circumstances will be codified away. Not a good thing given complexity of humanity, but sadly probably inevitable.

The right to 'an appeal' will get severely curtailed since AI will appeal by default. Those appeals that remain will require payment or other friction (lawyers etc). This will be bad and will cause much suffering.

Putting 'humans back in the loop' might help for a few months, but AI is not just hitting the online channel. AI generated conversational phone calls are a thing, and will only get better. And who's to say that they might not provide a reasonable adjustment to a disabled individual?