Sunday, January 14, 2024
When the computers take over
It was only a matter of time. The Mirror reports that government ministers are already getting AI to read documents for them and decide which are the most important.
The paper says that Tory minister Alex Burghart admitted he uses an experimental “AI Red Box”, developed by the Cabinet Office, to sift through the stack of papers he’s given to read every day, and he claimed another minister is also using the experimental system, as is top civil servant Alex Chisolm.:
He also revealed officials had tried to implement a chatbot to sit on top of the Gov.UK website and deal with enquiries from the public, with access to the entire database of government information.
But the experiment was scrapped when it did “some strange things” - like speaking French and being wrong a fifth of the time.
Describing the “AI red box”, Mr Burghart told an event in Westminster: “What it does is it can read documents that go into your red box, it can summarise them, it can highlight connections between papers, connections between previous papers. And over time, as we fine-tune this model, it will become, I believe, the institutional memory of the department.”
He said that while a lot of good people pass through the Cabinet Office, “they don’t always stay that long.” “It means that things that happened three, four or five years ago, those people are not around anymore,” he said. “But with an effective AI red box, that won’t be a problem any more.”
Lib Dem Treasury spokesperson Sarah Olney MP said: "MPs and Ministers spending time to look over casework and policy is bread and butter. If they can’t be bothered to read things for themselves, we may as well let the robots run the country. Which can't be much more worse than this Conservative mess."
There are some of course, who would argue that given the lack of compassion shown by this government, the computers have been running it for some time.
The paper says that Tory minister Alex Burghart admitted he uses an experimental “AI Red Box”, developed by the Cabinet Office, to sift through the stack of papers he’s given to read every day, and he claimed another minister is also using the experimental system, as is top civil servant Alex Chisolm.:
He also revealed officials had tried to implement a chatbot to sit on top of the Gov.UK website and deal with enquiries from the public, with access to the entire database of government information.
But the experiment was scrapped when it did “some strange things” - like speaking French and being wrong a fifth of the time.
Describing the “AI red box”, Mr Burghart told an event in Westminster: “What it does is it can read documents that go into your red box, it can summarise them, it can highlight connections between papers, connections between previous papers. And over time, as we fine-tune this model, it will become, I believe, the institutional memory of the department.”
He said that while a lot of good people pass through the Cabinet Office, “they don’t always stay that long.” “It means that things that happened three, four or five years ago, those people are not around anymore,” he said. “But with an effective AI red box, that won’t be a problem any more.”
Lib Dem Treasury spokesperson Sarah Olney MP said: "MPs and Ministers spending time to look over casework and policy is bread and butter. If they can’t be bothered to read things for themselves, we may as well let the robots run the country. Which can't be much more worse than this Conservative mess."
There are some of course, who would argue that given the lack of compassion shown by this government, the computers have been running it for some time.
Comments:
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Compassion is not a strong element in the Conservative party.
Computer systems are only as accurate/strong/etc as the HUMANS behind making it.
The weakness/bias of those behind making the software CERTAINLY leads to them always being monitored.
Computers are only machines that humans are behind.
It is the human element that should ALWAYS be 1st for machines have no nuance of situations.They see them just as black and white.
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Computer systems are only as accurate/strong/etc as the HUMANS behind making it.
The weakness/bias of those behind making the software CERTAINLY leads to them always being monitored.
Computers are only machines that humans are behind.
It is the human element that should ALWAYS be 1st for machines have no nuance of situations.They see them just as black and white.
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