The Guidelines on Generative AI Use for Civil Servants, developed by the Royal Civil Service Commission and GovTech, mark a tentative step towards integrating artificial intelligence into public administration. While the document acknowledges AI’s potential to enhance efficiency—automating tasks, generating insights, and improving citizen engagement—it also underscores risks such as misinformation
The Guidelines on Generative AI Use for Civil Servants, developed by the Royal Civil Service Commission and GovTech, mark a tentative step towards integrating artificial intelligence into public administration. While the document acknowledges AI’s potential to enhance efficiency—automating tasks, generating insights, and improving citizen engagement—it also underscores risks such as misinformation, algorithmic bias, and privacy breaches. Yet many officials, unfamiliar with algorithmic accountability, cannot effectively implement these policies, let alone mentor future generations.
More importantly, our education system neglects to equip students—the generation growing up immersed in AI—with foundational literacy to navigate its societal impacts. Schools encourage technology adoption but fail to teach critical engagement with AI’s ethical dilemmas, data privacy risks, or vulnerabilities like deepfakes and biased algorithms. This omission risks creating a future where youth, though fluent in using AI tools, lack the discernment to challenge their harms or govern their evolution.
This dissonance mirrors the UNDP’s 2024 findings: Bhutan’s AI talent pool is concentrated in elite institutions, while broader educational frameworks neglect computational literacy and ethical reasoning. As Bhutan may adopt foreign AI models and guidelines, it risks fostering dependency rather than cultivating a populace capable of shaping technology aligned with its values. The stakes are high: without urgent reforms, today’s students—tomorrow’s leaders—will inherit systems they are ill-prepared to manage, amplifying inequities and eroding sovereignty in an AI-driven world.
Compounding these challenges are Bhutan’s infrastructural inequities. Unreliable internet connectivity and exorbitant internet charges have entrenched paper-based administrative systems, exacerbating disparities in AI access, particularly in rural regions.
UNESCO’s 2022 guidelines on AI and education emphasise the need for curricula addressing ethical dilemmas, data privacy, and critical digital literacy—principles largely absent in Bhutan’s classrooms. The Gelephu Mindfulness City’s (GMC) vision aligns with global benchmarks as it embraces the use of robotics, fintech, and cryptocurrency to develop national policy or legislation and cybersecurity. These reforms are equally important here outside the GMC to address the risks of fostering a generation of passive technology consumers, ill-equipped to challenge inequities or innovate responsibly. For example, many public institutions, including banks and those using G2C services, still require paper submissions after online completion, creating redundant work for service users.
To address these fundamental gaps, Parliament must establish comprehensive legislation anchored in three interconnected pillars: firstly, the systematic modernisation of curriculum through strategic partnerships with premier institutions like Gyalpozhing College of Information Technology and the College of Science and Technology, ensuring AI education aligns with Gross National Happiness principles; secondly, the development of robust infrastructure through public-private partnerships to modernise internet connectivity, digitise administrative processes, and eliminate redundant paper-based systems that currently burden citizens with duplicate submissions; and thirdly, the implementation of stringent accountability mechanisms through independent oversight bodies and private tech firms to audit compliance, to transform our existing fragmented technological landscape into a cohesive, forward-thinking ecosystem that effectively harnesses AI capabilities whilst preserving cultural integrity and social equity.
The importance of AI literacy transcends technological adoption—it is a legal and moral obligation. For example, the Chinese government has planned to make AI an educational curriculum starting from primary school in September 2025. Our education system can adopt similar measures to propel innovation and abandon piecemeal policies for systemic change over the decades. Thus, by ensuring mandatory AI education, investing in infrastructure, and fostering accountability, we can transform vulnerability into resilience. AI will become part of everyone’s life henceforth.
