The State’s Programmed Obsolescence: Preparing for the Inevitable Impact of AI and Demographic Changes

El Ciudadano

Original article: La obsolescencia programada del Estado

By Francisco Díaz Herrera

Consider a figure that should keep any public official awake at night: between 30% and 50% of the tasks currently performed by knowledge workers in the public sector —drafting reports, categorizing requests, assisting citizens, reviewing documents— could be automated or significantly aided by artificial intelligence within the next 10 to 15 years.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s backed by McKinsey, confirmed by Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2017), and demonstrated by real-time developments.

Even more troubling, most of our Latin American states have no clue how to prepare for this shift. We continue to manage the present with outdated tools while the future is already knocking on our door.

Five megatrends are simultaneously impacting our states: the AI revolution; climate change, which is no longer a future threat but a present catastrophe; the accelerated aging of our populations that will devastate pension and health systems as we know them; the geopolitical reconfiguration disrupting established international norms; and the crisis of democratic legitimacy undermining citizen trust in institutions.

None of these trends operates in isolation. They all mutually reinforce each other.

When Nature Also Bills

Since 2010, Chile has experienced the longest megadrought in a millennium. A thousand years. Yet our public administration continues planning as if the rain will return next season.

Climate change isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s a governance crisis. The wildfires consuming thousands of hectares, the tidal surges destroying coastal areas, the mudslides erasing infrastructure —all of these are failures of institutional foresight.

The 2022 Climate Change Framework Law sets a target for carbon neutrality by 2050. Good. But the gap between legislation and institutional reality is staggering. How many municipalities have updated climate risk mapping? How many ministries systematically integrate climate projections into their investment decisions? In most cases, the answer is zero.

The Demographic Time Bomb

By 2050, 32% of Chileans will be over 60 years old, up from 17% today. This projected increase, based on INE data (2022), is not an abstract statistic; it heralds a creaking pension system, hospitals that will be overwhelmed, and a demand for care that will rest on families —especially women— who can no longer absorb it.

The AFP pension system was designed in the 1980s for a demographic that no longer exists. Yet, no one has seriously acknowledged that reforming it also necessitates reforming the state apparatus that administers it.

The Future State: Two Key Strategies to Avoid Obsolescence

In light of this scenario, political science and public economics have long debated two responses that decision-makers in the region must consider seriously.

The first is proposed by Mariana Mazzucato (2013, 2021), an Italian economist frustrated with the notion that the state should only correct market failures. Her thesis is clear: innovations such as the internet, GPS, touch screens, renewable energies, and the first HIV drugs— all of which the tech sector now privatizes— were funded by the state.

Mazzucato’s proposal is to reclaim an active role for the state: a proactive government that directs long-term public missions, takes risks where the market fails to go, and distributes innovation returns equitably instead of leading to socialized losses and privatized gains.

The second is articulated by Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg (2017): the Collaborative Public Value paradigm, which recognizes something that New Public Management systematically ignored: major challenges of our time —climate change, inequality, insecurity— cannot be solved by any single actor alone. They require genuine collaboration, co-design of policies, and meaningful community participation.

The state transitions from a solitary, hierarchical designer to a catalyst and facilitator of collective value creation processes.

Learning to Envision the Future: The True Deficit

Finland has had a Parliamentary Future Committee since 1993 as a constitutional mandate. Singapore maintains the Centre for Strategic Futures directly under the Prime Minister’s Office. The United Kingdom has the Government Office for Science, while Canada has Policy Horizons. In all these nations, contemplating the future is a permanent institutional function, complete with budgets, teams, and methodologies. It is not merely a consulting exercise conducted every decade and then shelved.

In contrast, Chile has conducted sectoral foresight exercises —Energy 2050, some initiatives in agriculture, and science— but in a fragmented and discontinuous manner, with little real impact on policy decisions. We lack a permanent, cross-cutting foresight structure, and in a world where disruptions accelerate, that is a luxury we can no longer afford.

These questions aren’t merely academic. They are management questions. If no one in your organization is asking them today, it’s because no one has the mandate or methodology to address them. That’s what needs to change.

Time is Running Out

Make no mistake: I’m not saying that all is lost. I’m indicating that there is little time left to choose between two paths.

The first is to continue managing the present with outdated tools, hoping the future will be merciful. The second is to acknowledge that 21st-century public administration requires radically different capabilities —strategic foresight, institutional resilience, collaborative governance, AI literacy— and to start building them now.

The robots are already in place. The drought has arrived. Seniors are already retiring with embarrassingly low replacement rates. The question is not if the megatrends will affect us. They are affecting us now. The question is whether we will manage them or merely oversee their collapse.

The state of the future must either learn to envision the future or it will become a monument to the past.

(*) Francisco Jonatan Díaz Herrera is a Public Administrator, licensed in Government and Public Management, and in Security and Defense. He has furthered his education with diplomas in: territorial cohesion for development, governance, public organization management, and political management. He brings over ten years of experience in the public sector, serving in coordination, technical analysis, and institutional leadership roles within organizations such as the Undersecretariat of Regional and Administrative Development at the Ministry of the Interior, the Senate of the Republic, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG). He is the author of the book «Processes of State Modernization: Bureaucracy, Public Management, and the Age of Artificial Intelligence» (Editorial Eunomía, 2026).

References cited in this column

Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. (2017). Machine, platform, crowd. W. W. Norton. | Bryson, J. M., Crosby, B. C., & Bloomberg, L. (2017). Creating public value in practice. CRC Press. | Díaz Herrera, F. J. (2026). Procesos de modernización del Estado. Editorial Eunomía. | INE. (2022). Estimaciones y proyecciones de la población de Chile 1992-2050. | Mazzucato, M. (2021). Mission economy. Allen Lane. | McKinsey Global Institute. (2023). The economic potential of generative AI. | OCDE. (2019). Strategic Foresight for Better Policies. OECD Publishing.