Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector in Shanghai: Conceptualization, Context, and Capacity

In preparation to the study of AI in the public sector in Shanghai, this chapter establishes with greater precision what it means to use artificial intelligence in the activities of public organizations. It reviews public sector AI scholarship to derive a comprehensive analytical framework for examining the main sociotechnical factors affecting the use of AI in the public sector. Based on this framework, it offers a precise explanation of the key technological, social, and country-specific factors that influence the use of AI in the public sector in China. The chapter then introduces the policy capacity framework as a valuable tool to assess the ability of Shanghai to deploy AI in the public sector. The chapter concludes by showing that the sociotechnical conceptualization of “AI in the public sector in China” proposed here brings into focus a set of important elements to assess Shanghai’s policy capacity to implement AI in the public sector, and the impacts of such capacity on public service provision.