Civil Servant Robot ‘Commits Suicide’! Implications of AI for Public Service Codes of Practice

By Tunji Olaopa

In June 2024, and in the Gumi City Council of South Korea, a service robot—or Robot Supervisor—was alleged to have committed “suicide.” This event is just one of the many bizarre and chilling incidences that herald the consequences of the unraveling of artificial intelligence and robotics in contemporary human affairs. In the same South Korea in November 2023, another robot deployed in a vegetable plant fatally crushed a man to death because it could not differentiate between the man and the boxes of vegetables. Some seven years earlier, in 2017, Sophia—the first humanoid robot—became the first robot citizen of Saudi Arabia and an innovation ambassador for the United Nations Development Program. All over the world, and due to the increasing deployment of AI and robotics in various professional fields—from engineering to surgery and the public service—we will never know the statistics of fatalities that might have resulted due to robotic malfunctions.Two significant facts about South Korea will bring the two earlier incidents into clearer relief. One, South Korea has the highest robot density in the whole world. Statistics claim that there is at least one robot for every ten people in the country. To put it clearly, robots have been deployed almost everywhere in South Korea. Most importantly, robots, like Sophia, have become not just administrative assistants but effectively civil servants working tirelessly in state and city councils. The second fact that connects with the so-called robot suicide is that South Korea has the unenviable record of being one of Asia’s most overworked countries. South Koreans work fifty-two hours per week, from 9am to 9pm every day. The total of 1915 hours per year is 200 hours more than the average clocked by any countries within the OECD nations. It was inevitable that the South Koreans would invent a name for death by overwork: gwarosa. The Japanese call it karoshi.It is therefore no surprise that even a service robot would “feel” the fatal pressure of the overworked workplace, and develop a glitch that plunged it to its death. This facts about South Korea allow me to draw specific correlations and implications for public administration and the public service in postcolonial Nigeria, especially in terms of institutional reforms and what we can call the imperative of technological modernization, public service ethics, productivity and democratic governance that can make the public service a genuine backstop for launching a developmental state in Nigeria. The Asian countries are notorious for the template of their work ethic. This ethic connects working longer hours with the value of diligence and perseverance which translate to a productive persona. The Robot Supervisor was integrated into the (over)work culture, working from 9am to 6pm daily.There is a similarity between the workplace pressure in Asia and in Africa. In 2025, the ten most hardworking countries in Africa, ranked by an average weekly work hour, are Sudan (50.8), Lesotho (50.2), Republic of the Congo (48.7), Sao Tome and Principe (48.2), Liberia (47.5), Egypt (45.6), Burkina Faso (45.3), Cape Verde (45.3), Zimbabwe (45.0), and Senegal (44.9). Even though work hours do not always automatically translate into productivity, Nigeria, at 39.6 hours per week, does not qualify as a hardworking nation. This work hour might actually reflect a work culture that is less than salutary within the context of what Nigerians usually call the ‘Nigerian Factor”; a key dimension of which is the indolence that attends working in a government institution. This plays into the overall fabric of institutional dysfunction, especially in the over-bloated and ineffective public service, where too many people doing nothing, too many doing too little, and too few people doing too much.A significant dimension of institutional reform and modernization of the dysfunctional public service in Nigeria is the imperative of open and transparent government that demands the deployment of technological creativity and innovation in fast tracking efficiency in government business, and ultimately productivity. This technological imperative lies beneath the need for computerization, digitization and automation of the public service to increase and deepen efficiencies. Given the furious development in AI and robotics, and the demonstration of their efficiency in assisting government to achieve their administrative goals, we can say that Nigeria is grossly behind in creating an efficient workplace where the robotic and human civil servants can work side by side in energizing the public service workplace for efficient and effective service.And yet, the level of our anxiety with being behind in the AI deployment race must be directly proportional to the level of our carefulness in learning from the technological experiences of other countries in ways that will feed Nigeria’s institutional reform trajectory. Experience, and definitely example, is the best teacher, as they say! The Gumi City Council AI incident says and teaches significant lessons. At the fundamental level, the incidence calls to the fore the context of interaction between human and machines, and the ethical framework that ought to guide that interaction. This implies that reflections about AI and its reality must first be grounded within the sociocultural circumstances of those who are deploying it. AI, when it begins to function, is a reality within a specific milieu. And so, it is not a phenomenon that must be taken as an unconscious default adaptation process. When South Korea adopted and adapted it, it was within a specific demographic, administrative and cultural context. Any thought that goes to the need to deploy AI must be thoughts that consider the context within which it is to be deployed and those that it will affect, positively and negatively.The constant evolution and modifications to AI is due to the fact that it is developed by humans for humans. AI affects people in their various social and professional endeavors. And it is only within these contexts that we can adjudge AI to be functional and successful, or ineffective and failed. It is these contextual dynamics of deployment and use that provides the accurate data that enables us to think about the regulatory frameworks that can help us make AI more adaptable for societal, institutional, organizational and ethical use. The worries about AI are critical ones. There is the worry about the increasing autonomy of AI and the challenges that poses for how humans perceive themselves and their worth. But more immediate is the worry about the societal disruptions of the deployment of AI, especially in the workplace—displacement, alienation, security, death. Thus, AI is not just a panoply of technical issues. It is also fundamentally a human-centered phenomenon that must be adequately understood if we are to better enjoy its functional innovation and creativity.These issues take on some sinister conceptual and practical directions when situated within Nigeria’s dysfunctional context of public administration. Africa has the unsavory reputation of being the most difficult administrative context in the world. And this translates into a lot of implications and repercussions for individual states like Nigeria. One of the implications is the lack of efficient connection between the public service and the state. It is difficult, for instance, to point to any functional developmental state—in the mold of the Asian Tigers—on the continent. And this speaks volume about the capacity of individual states to deliver on the promises and dividends of good governance for their respective citizens. It is also a damning indictment on the effectiveness of the trajectories of institutional reforms in Africa. This is the context that demands, as a matter of urgency, the AI revolution in the service of productivity for a citizenry that have been waiting a long time for good governance. And yet, this is where caution is most required in proportion to the level of urgency. In other words, if the malfunctioning of robot assistants and supervisors can generate such a huge global hoopla within a work and administrative context—like South Korea—that is highly efficient and productive, what would happen if they are deployed within a highly difficult administrative environment? Or, even more fundamental, how do we relate the deployment of AI to a context that less than effective, efficient and productive?Is it enough to automate, computerize or digitize when the system and processes being improved have not been mapped, reprofiled for reengineering; does it not amount to engrafting technology on a challenged system and what results should we expect? This is the current direction of the institutional and administrative reform dynamics in the Nigerian public service. And it calls for a critical pause for reflection. Two issues are fundamental for resolution. The first is: Can the AI efficiency dynamic be tacked on to a deficient system to achieve efficiency and effectiveness? Yes, it can; but then it becomes another supposedly “innovative” recipe for deepening existing inefficiencies and deficits. First consideration: we need to start the reflection from the perspective of the self-motivated, hardworking but extremely frazzled and demotivated Nigerian public servant who is compelled by so many factors to work within a highly toxic, inefficient and highly politicized workplace. This is the first and most significant context that AI is to be deployed. How will this pan out in practice? What regulatory frameworks can such a system deploy? What safety measures can the system afford that will not compromise the human well-being?Second, how do we ethically mediate the relationship between the robot assistant and the human civil servant not just in terms of emotional connection but fundamentally of ethical relationship. If the existing public service is flawed in mediating human-to-human ethical relations, how do we hope to situate the human-AI component and achieve even a measure of success? The workplace is a context that must be configured to protect and enhance human dignity, self-worth and welfare which cannot be sacrificed to structural efficiency that AI deployment is meant to address. What accountability structures and standards are then in place to safeguard human self-worth? This also goes beyond the workplace to, for example, the sanctity of data collected by AI. How is the system to ensure data privacy? How about the ethical oversight function of the system to monitor AI autonomy and deployment for critical use? This also affects the way the system manages public perception and public trust with regard to the functional effectiveness of AI.A challenged system does not need more innovation; rather, it needs a moment to rethink and reengineer and get right the institutional basics. The effectiveness of AI in the workplace is not in doubt; it has been demonstrated all across the world as the harbinger of efficiencies and productivity if properly managed and grafted effectively into a functional system. AI is meant to enhance an already functioning system rather than serving as an instigator for a deficient one. This implies that to adopt, adapt and deploy AI into the Nigerian administrative workplace must be preceded by an urgent imperative of reflecting on, rethinking and reengineering the administrative and institutional basics that can make the public service genuinely and efficiently worldclass. And the most fundamental question in this regard is: what change management mechanism can yield a government business model that is efficient?

*Prof. Tunji Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja