Policy & Practice | Fall 2026

By Michael J. Walsh, Tiffany Dovey Fishman, and Lindsey Harbison

C

ommercial aviation offers a useful lesson for human services modernization. Autopilot has made flying safer and more efficient, but it has not made pilots optional. If anything, automation has raised the premium on human readiness: pilots need to understand what the system is doing, recognize when con ditions fall outside its limits, and know when to take control.

Human services agencies face a similar tran sition. Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping operations from intake and eligibility determina tion to quality assurance and case management. Agentic AI raises the stakes by moving beyond task support: it can plan, execute, and act across multiple workflow steps with limited human intervention. Interview assistants can guide client interactions, case review tools can identify discrepancies before decisions are finalized, and quality assurance agents can flag and route potential errors.

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