The Agentic State

Article posted with permission from the author, Karen Schumacher

What the heck is the Agentic State?  According to this “vision paper“, created by the Tallinn Digital Summit 2025, “agentic AI will transform government and will define the contours of the Agentic State.”

According to IBM, Agentic AI “consists of AI agents—machine learning models that mimic human decision-making to solve problems in real time. In a multi-agent system, each agent performs a specific subtask required to reach the goal and their efforts are coordinated through AI orchestration.”

What this means is that Artificial Intelligence agents (AI Agents) “can perceive complex situations, reason through problems, and take autonomous action within defined boundaries” across organizational boundaries.  The goal is to have government function with AI Agents where data is used to make decisions. This defines the Agentic State, a government run by programmed AI agents.

“GovTech, short for Government Technology, is defined as the application of technology to improve the delivery of government services, enhance government operations, and promote citizen engagement and participation in governance”.  It also tracks developments in the federal government.  The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) covers the government’s IT initiatives.

Simply put, GovTech, beloved by the World Bank and World Economic Forum (WEF), is the digital transformation of government, all government.

From this WEF report, the summary states that GovTech “offers solutions that streamline processes, reduce costs and rebuild public trust.”  You betcha, the public will have full faith in a sterile, computer-run, decision-making, artificial government system where “participation in governance” is an illusion, or maybe delusion.  This “Future of Government” is explained in this WEF video.

WEF has GovTech centres across the world affecting many sectors as part of its Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) network.  So sophisticated is GovTech, even in war-torn Ukraine the “state” is literally in a smartphone (pg 21).  The Berlin Global Government Technology Centre released a whitepaper explaining this government transformation.

Now this hasn’t been fully implemented in the United States yet, but AI is already being used, and implemented, in federal agencies.  The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is promoting this transformation to AI for states.  Identifying who participates in your state can be found here, or who is an involved state legislator here.

This article provides an example of how AI will run cities.  Just imagine the Agentic AI making all the decisions.  But also, imagine how control over lives can be implemented.  Creating an “Anticipatory government … when it’s powered by AI and analytics can enable governments to not only predict undesirable activities, but also prevent them from occurring, from spotting fraud to combating the opioid epidemic”, one has to ponder how much control over lives can be hijacked by an AI Agent.  It is in the hands of technocrats who decide how the AI and its algorithms are programmed.

So, you attend a protest, post an unflattering social media comment, send an email with complaints to the government, and a host of other negative perspectives about the government.  All of that data is captured by some AI agent and dumped into your little government file.  At what point will the AI Agent decide that your behavior is too negative and some consequences should be laid upon you?  It’s all in how the Agent is programmed, by the government.

While this action couldn’t be described as a Chinese social credit system, it sure looks the same.  Maybe social control would be a better description.

Meanwhile, as future victims of this horror story in the U.S. remain fixated on the predetermined media stories that are nauseatingly reiterated every hour of the day, this unchecked government marches forward with its technologically run government.  It is being sold to the masses as a government that will serve the people more efficiently and “improve citizen engagement”.  That is nothing but a bunch of bull cocky, but it is coming unless we the self-governed, make a conscience decision to exercise our duty to govern the government.