Job Losses — But Also Gains

There have been job losses, of course, but also gains. Earlier this year, IBM began using AI “and specifically AI agents to replace the work of a couple of hundred human resources workers,” the Wall Street Journal reports, but as a result IBM “hired more programmers and salespeople.” (A typical and helpful response to job-loss fears is that “you won’t lose your job to AI, but you might lose your job to someone who knows how to use AI.”)

And adopting AI can take some adjustment. “This started as a kind of experiment for us,” Perez recalls. “Back in 2023, when these tools were just coming out, we were spending a lot of time and energy refining the language of our PAC solicitations, going back and forth with edits and approvals and everything that entails. But once I learned how to craft a proper prompt, a lot of labor just sort of went away. And the results speak for themselves. There’s a learning curve, for sure, but the efforts were certainly worth it for us.”

Refining the language of PAC solicitations is only one use for AI, of course. The possibilities seem endless. So, as mentioned, are the platforms that are eager to help you do your work.

At the beginning of the year, as part of its 2025 State of Government Affairs industry report, FiscalNote surveyed 1,000 professionals in the field, learning that 89% of government affairs teams “stated that they are exploring using AI to make them more efficient and get tasks done quicker. They are using AI for common tasks such as bill analysis and summaries [and] bill comparisons, as well as creating communications and other content.”

The results aren’t always perfect, but the savings in time and energy appear indisputable, and new uses seem to present themselves even more rapidly than new platforms.

Learning Curves and Valid Concerns

What Perez calls a learning curve might be an understatement, though the learning need not be as intimidating as skeptics might fear. A “mindset shift is required,” says Michael Connery, Weber Shandwick’s executive vice president for AI Strategy, who also spoke at the April workshop. Connery recommends thinking of AI “as a collaborator,” a helper, an inexhaustible assistant that can perform otherwise wearisome tasks in an instant but needs coaching.

This assistant can produce data and even insights and synthesize the results in useful ways but “can never replace your own expertise, experience and judgment.” Like any assistant, it requires supervision. AI can “hallucinate,” producing results that might sound convincing but have no basis in fact. By now, we’ve all heard stories of lawyers in court filings citing cases that turned out to have been fabricated by ChatGPT. A situation like this, the law firm of Seyfarth Shaw reports, “holds lessons for lawyers and non-lawyers alike.”

AI in many cases “will simply try to predict what you’re looking for — whether that thing exists or not,” Brigandi explains. “For that reason, you always need to verify what it produces.” (Some platforms, such as Perplexity, cite the sources of its claims, but AI can also make up nonexistent hyperlinks or misrepresent their content, so be sure to look at the sources themselves and don’t assume a link means it’s real.)

There are other concerns as well, involving privacy, copyright and related issues with possible legal ramifications. That’s why it is so important to involve teams in your AI efforts, so professionals with expertise in different areas can help.

“We’d never share information about specific individuals who have registered to attend conferences or other events the Council sponsors,” Brigandi says. “But in planning a conference or event — in setting an agenda or planning sessions — we will use AI to provide general suggestions on, say, the most urgent priorities of grassroots professionals or PAC managers and what they’d most want to learn from attending a particular session at a conference.”

‘Creative Juices’

“AI can even offer catchy titles for the session or provide a list of learning objectives. Again, these are just tools,” Brigandi adds. “They should never be substitutes for your own ingenuity, but they can be good for a kind of brainstorming. They can help get your own creative juices flowing.”

Incorporating AI into your advocacy program — or getting the full benefit of its use — can be a challenge, but it will be worth it. “It’s like a lot of technological advances, in that a degree of caution is healthy,” Brigandi says. “But at this point, there really is no turning back. To use an analogy from a simpler time, the barn door is open, and the horse has already bolted.”