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UK ministers are piloting the use of generative artificial intelligence to analyse responses to government consultations and write draft answers to parliamentary questions.
Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, will on Thursday unveil tools that the AI “crack squad” at the heart of Whitehall is trialling with a view to wider rollouts across central departments and public services.
It forms part of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s drive to boost Whitehall productivity through technology, including AI, when tight public finances are limiting ministers’ ability to improve public services with more cash.
The AI tools include using government-hosted versions of ChatGPT and a mix of open-source AI models securely hosted in-house to draft preliminary responses to questions to ministers submitted by MPs and to freedom of information requests.
The drafts would always be checked by a human civil servant and the AI tools are programmed to ensure they cite their sources on all claims, so they can be verified.
The AI “red box” tool, a reference to the way it may help members of the government complete the work in their ministerial red boxes, is able to grab and condense information from official sources, such as Hansard, the parliamentary record, or government speeches.
In a briefing ahead of his speech, Dowden said AI would not be appropriate in “novel or contentious or highly politically sensitive areas” but could work well in assisting with “routine” policy tasks.
A new AI tool is also being piloted to read, summarise and triage the response to public consultations, which typically require 25 civil servants three months to process.
Ministers launch about 700 consultations a year and a recent state consultation on the smoking ban elicited thousands of pages of responses, equivalent in length to 400 times the Brexit agreement.
Speaking at Imperial College London, Dowden will say the government is keen “where these pilots have proof of concept, that we can scale them up as fast as possible” to save money and improve public services.
The rapid pace of development means opportunities are being identified on a daily basis and that AI is “potentially a ‘silver bullet’” to solve problems across government, he will say.
Dowden will also announce plans for an AI collaboration charter with the NHS. AI pilots are already taking place in many areas of health, such as diagnostics, tailoring medicine to individuals based on genetics, and tackling prescription error and fraud. The AI programme on prescriptions alone is projected to save about £900mn if it is rolled out.
The AI cell in the Cabinet Office, known as the “Incubator for AI” or “i. AI”, is set to more than double in size to 70 highly technically qualified staff, up from its target of 30 personnel when it was launched last November. Its budget is also set to rise from £5mn to £110mn, with the money reallocated from elsewhere in the Cabinet Office.
Dowden argued there must be “constant and relentless pressure” to drive the use of AI in the public sector, adding: “We can’t have the private sector adopting it at pace, and then us being laggards.”
However, he also acknowledged the “error rate” tolerable for AI technology in the public sector would be far lower than in commercial settings.
Laura Gilbert, chief analyst and data science director at Downing Street, said the government had found a lot of “low-hanging fruit” where AI could drive significant efficiencies. While there was a general target for a 3.55 times return on investment on AI, she said “some of the early tools are more like a 200 times return on the investment”.
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