Is AI the answer for better government services?

Long before ChatGPT came along, governments were keen to use chatbots to automate their services and advice.

Those early chatbots “tended to be simpler, with limited conversational abilities,” says Colin van Noordt, a researcher on the use of AI in government, and based in the Netherlands.

But the emergence of generative AI in the last two years, has revived a vision of more efficient public service, where human-like advisors can work all hours, replying to questions over benefits, taxes and other areas where the government interacts with the public.

Generative AI is sophisticated enough to give human-like responses, and if trained on enough quality data, in theory it could deal with all sorts of questions about government services.

But generative AI has become well known for making mistakes or even nonsensical answers – so-called hallucinations.