Over the past few decades, advances in technology, from personal computers to the Internet, have repeatedly changed the way we live and work. While each innovation was initially met with skepticism regarding market disruption and job losses, it ultimately became part of everyday life, transforming industries and redefining expectations.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently at a similar crossroads, but with one crucial difference. The pace of progress feels faster and the stakes seem higher. For Arkansas public service leaders, business innovators, and nonprofit professionals, the question is no longer whether AI will shape our work, but whether leaders know how to use it responsibly and strategically.
That urgency is why Dean Victoria DeFrancesco Soto. Clinton Civil Service School Together with my fellow doctors, he gave us a mission. Songkhun Nillasithanukroh and Andreas Sihotang create a new course called AI in Public Services. She realized that developing tomorrow’s leaders requires more than traditional policy analysis and management skills. We need to ensure they have the digital fluency necessary to navigate a rapidly evolving landscape.
The focus of our course is not to replace human judgment or eliminate jobs. Instead, it is important to strengthen the ability of leaders to serve their communities more effectively. From reducing administrative burden on state agencies to expanding access to services in rural Arkansas, AI offers an opportunity to make governments and organizations more efficient and responsive, if leaders understand the promise of this new technology and its potential risks.
Our goal is not to develop students into engineers, but to develop AI-skilled leaders. These professionals need to understand how these tools work and where they need to be careful. By ingraining students in ethical frameworks, data security, and real-world applications, we ensure that Clinton School graduates are equipped to lead organizations through technology transitions, rather than reacting to them. We use Ethan Mollick’s New York Times bestseller Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI as our primary text. Rather than fearing AI, we offer a practical framework for working with it.
Throughout the course, students will use AI to evaluate real-world public sector cases, assess risks related to bias and data security, discuss the ethical implications of AI, and practice integrating the tool into various scenarios.
They learn to ask better questions of AI systems, validate their output, and apply AI in ways that improve the communities they serve. Students will also interact with guest speakers with expertise ranging from national security to workforce development, as well as groups such as AI in the Rock, a working group of experts who share research on the latest developments in the field.
The impact of AI is especially important for rural and underserved communities in Arkansas. These tools allow leaders to spend more time on the people side of service, such as relationship building, strategic planning, and direct service to the people they serve, rather than replacing local expertise. In a state where rural communities are the backbone of our civic and economic lives, equipping tomorrow’s public service leaders with AI literacy is the path to a more responsive and resilient workforce.
Integrating this expertise into our curriculum will enable Clinton School graduates to modernize government operations, expand the capabilities of nonprofit organizations, and help organizations responsibly adapt to this evolving landscape. The impact of this course will be reflected in a new generation of leaders in Arkansas with stronger organizations, more efficient service delivery, and ready to lead their communities through the next era of change.
Editor’s note: Dr. Robert Richards Jr. is an associate professor and director of the Open Governance Institute at the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service. Pipa Pipa is a Master of Public Service candidate at the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service and a graduate assistant for the Clinton School’s inaugural AI in Public Service course.
