Why the Holdup Using Artificial Intelligence to Cut Illinois Government Costs? – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

With a budget that soared over 40% since 2019 and structural deficits projected to grow to over $5 billion by 2031, Illinois should see that it has has no choice but to utilize tools at hand to cut costs and improve government efficiency.

One such tool is artificial intelligence.

However, a largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better?

So far, the evidence says no.

The private sector is so confident that AI will produce cost savings that its bets have been made – huge bets. Part of today’s lofty stock prices is widely attributed to corporate cost savings from AI. A Goldman Sachs analysis estimated that a stunning $19 billion of market value has accrued on that expectation, as Fortune reported. AI’s boost to productivity could raise the U.S. GDP and earnings by roughly 15%

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, a billionaire and former Chicagoan, is the latest to speak about how AI will fundamentally reshape society. He once called it “garbage,” but said this month that “work that we would usually do with people with master’s and PhDs in finance over the course of weeks or months is being done by AI agents over the course of hours or days.” AI already delivers productivity gains of 15% to 25% in software engineering, he said, but far more disruptive shift is happening in knowledge work and research.

What about Illinois state government? Where are savings being achieved or even projected?

Search all you want but you will find almost nothing.

In fairness, Illinois has not ignored AI. The Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) issued a formal AI policy in April 2025. The DoIT said “AI offers significant potential benefits to Illinois residents by both improving public services and enhancing State operational efficiency.” A few specific, AI deployments by the state have been reported, such as a Microsoft Copilot Chat for 55,000 state employees to boost workforce. And in pilot programs, AI tools summarize policy documents, help agencies manage case backlogs, and improve response time in child and family services.

But those examples are few because Illinois has focused more on regulation and restrictions than on deployment, as reflected in a CIO article from earlier this month.  It quotes Illinois’ chief information officer describing the state’s approach as a “crawl-walk-run” model. “You have to make sure that you have the checks and controls in place before you just go running down so fast,” he said.

That regulatory mindset is also clear in a lengthy report completed in December 2024 by Illinois’ Generative AI and Natural Language Processing Task Force. Look through it and you’ll see that it’s almost entirely about things like labor standards, “ethical and equitable” access, data privacy, security and the like. Concrete suggestions on where to deploy AI aren’t there.

There’s even a bill now pending in the General Assembly, SB 1366, that would prohibit deployment by state agencies unless permitted by rules adopted by DoIT. But those rules, under the bill, need not be completed until 2028.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Illinois received unflattering rankings in a study of state government progress on AI use released this month by Code for America. Regarding actual AI implementation and impact, the study gave Illinois it’s lowest ranking of “Early.” Regarding implementation, the study says “Available public sources emphasize early governance/legislation tracking rather than active operational deployments with measurable performance, monitoring, or maintenance processes.” Regarding impact, it says “Available reports provide recommendations and analysis; durable recurring measurement (inventories, mandated audits) was not evidenced at a statewide level in the sources reviewed here.”

The leading states, the study found, are Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Vermont. They “are not simply adopting AI tools,” the study says. “They are building the institutional capabilities required to govern AI as a long-term public-sector asset.”

The problem, of course, is that writing the rulebook is not the same as playing the game. While the private sector and some other states are proceeding with actual AI deployments, Illinois is bogged down.

That’s not to say that some aspects of AI don’t need regulation, but how long should it take to get that right? Every state and most nations are addressing the same problems so there’s plenty of research and precedent to follow. Illinois is blessed with an abundance of tech talent and has little excuse for falling behind.

One particular fear of AI is job loss, and the concern is well-founded. The point of AI is to do the same work or better with fewer workers. That issue is surely on top in the minds of our lawmakers — whether the state should retain more jobs or save money by employing fewer people.

To put it another way, is the state to be a jobs program or should budget control be the priority?

In a state so subservient to public unions, it’s hard to imagine that they won’t intervene and have their way on that. Nobody should be surprised if AI deployment in Illinois stays stalled while the political establishment waits for the fiscal pressure to force another round of tax increases — to the satisfaction of public unions.

Time will tell on that, but in the meantime somebody in Springfield should be asking the obvious: What specific functions are right for AI efficiencies and how much money could be saved? When? Why not now?

Answers are overdue.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.