When the Texas Workforce Commission became inundated with jobless claims in March 2020, it turned to artificial intelligence. Affectionately named for the agency’s former head Larry Temple, who had died a year earlier, “Larry” the chatbot was designed to help Texans sign up for unemployment benefits. Like a next generation FAQ page, Larry would field user-generated questions about unemployment cases. Using AI language processing, the bot would determine which answer prewritten by human staff would best fit the user’s unique phrasing of the question. The chatbot answered more than 21 million questions before being replaced by Larry 2.0 last March. Larry is one example of the ways artificial intelligence has been used by state agencies. Adaptation of the technology in state government has grown in recent years. But that acceleration has also sparked fears of unintended consequences like bias, loss of privacy or losing control of the technology.