Only the DMV creates a certain type of waiting. This is something flatter, more institutional, with the subtle scent of industrial carpet and the ambient hum of fluorescent lights that never quite flicker but seem like they might. It is not the resigned waiting of an airport gate or the anticipatory waiting of a restaurant. You accept a number. You take a seat. You watch as numbers that don’t appear to be yours are cycled on a digital display. It’s not the first time you’ve wondered if any government agency has ever thought, “We could do better,” after observing a customer.
Historically, the truthful response has been no. Since at least the early 1990s, when Vice President Al Gore started the National Performance Review to build a government that, to use the optimistic language of the day, “works better and costs less,” government efficiency reform has been a recurrent American promise. That was back in 1993. There has been no discernible reduction in the DMV line. There has been no improvement in the hold music. And the forms—especially for those whose first language is not English and who are attempting to understand legal code while juggling a toddler and a number ticket—remain confusing in ways that seem almost deliberate.
This is where bilingual AI has subtly begun to matter, and even skeptics should pay attention. A Google-powered AI assistant that can answer questions in English, Hmong, Somali, and Spanish has been implemented by Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety. This is a big deal in a state where a sizable portion of the populace has traditionally arrived at government offices without a clear way to communicate with the clerks behind the desk. As a practical consequence, routine inquiries like license status, registration renewal, and appointment scheduling no longer call for a dedicated human translator, a phone tree that ignores language barriers, or an in-person meeting that takes up half a workday. They are dealt with. Fast. at any time of day.
One could exaggerate the significance of this. Critics who closely monitor AI governance have argued forcefully that speeding up a broken process is not the same as fixing it. An AI that executes the underlying rules more quickly is just a more efficient version of the same problem if they are unclear, discriminatory by design, or just out of date. Another issue is training data; a system based mostly on English-language bureaucratic exchanges can replicate past blind spots as easily, if not more consistently, than any human clerk. These are not speculative worries. States are still working through these operational ones.
And yet. By employing machine learning to screen vanity plate applications in various languages, the California DMV is able to identify improper configurations that would be impossible for a human review panel to identify on a large scale. The back-and-forth that has always been one of the primary causes of wait times is being reduced by platforms designed to translate DMV requirements into plain language—not legal-adjacent summaries, but genuinely clear plain language. This helps people organize their documents before they ever walk through the door. According to reports, between 40 and 60 percent of routine inquiries are being completely diverted from human agents by automated call centers. That number isn’t from a press release. That is a change in structure.
Every administration since Clinton’s has pledged to provide leaner, more intelligent public services, so it’s difficult to ignore the lengthy history of government efficiency initiatives and the fact that the majority of these initiatives attempted to improve government by reorganizing its organizational structure. This is different because the fix is taking place at the point of contact—the precise moment the citizen interacts with the state—often in a language that the state was previously unable to support. It’s genuinely unclear if that adds up to something bigger, a DMV that feels more like a service than a duty. However, it is true that the 45-minute hold time has changed to 90 seconds. That’s a beginning.
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