UK Government to Roll Out AI Tool 'Consult' for Analyzing Public Consultations

AI tool put to test sifting public views on botox and fillers

The government hopes £45bn can be saved by wider public sector use of AI technology. The government says that Consult is currently still in its trial stage and more evaluation will take place before any final decision to roll it out more widely. There would always be "humans in the loop" checking Consult's work, the government added. Officials have also sought to address some of the persistent concerns about AI systems. One is that they sometimes invent information - a failing known as "hallucinating". Because the AI was only being asked to carry out a relatively limited task, officials said hallucination would not be a major problem. Such AI tools, built using what are known as "large language models" have also displayed bias, as they adsorb the prejudices inherent in the human-generated data on which they are trained. But experts who worked with Consult had found it reduced bias overall, the government said, by removing opportunities for individual human analysts to "project their own preconceived ideas". Consult has also been tested to check it can handle language containing spelling mistakes and other errors. However, for now it only works in English, and responses in other languages spoken within the UK such as Welsh would need to be translated into English first.

UK government to launch AI tool to speed up public consultations

New system will analyse responses 1,000 times faster than a human and save millions, ministers claim An AI tool has been used to review public responses to a government consultation for the first time and is now set to be rolled out more widely in an effort to save money and staff time. The tool, named "Consult", was first used by the Scottish government when it was seeking perspectives on the regulation of non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as lip filler. The UK government said the tool analysed responses and was able to produce results identical to human officials, and will now be used to review responses from other consultations, while also being developed further. While reviewing more than 2,000 responses, Consult identified key themes, which were then checked and refined by experts in the Scottish government. The government built Consult to be among its new package of AI tools, nicknamed "Humphrey", which they claim will "speed up work in Whitehall and cut back on consulting spending". They claim that, across the 500 consultations they run annually, the new tool will save the British taxpayer £20m a year and save up about 75,000 hours for government officials to focus on other work. Michael Rovatsos, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, said he believed that while the rewards of Consult could be great, the risks of biases influencing the AI shouldn't be overlooked. "While in principle the idea is that a human will always be in the loop, in practice the reality is that a person will not always have that much time to check every time, and that is when the biases will creep in." Rovatsos also said that "bad actors", domestic and foreign, could influence the AI's integrity through feeding it prompts. "You will have to invest in making sure that the systems are safe and robust and that will take money and time," he said. "I think that unlocking the benefits and avoiding the harm requires a lot more additional upfront investment and learning than what it might look like in the first instance. There's a danger that ministers and civil servants might see this as a quick fix to save money, but doing this well is essential and hard." The government claims that Consult will work 1,000 times faster than a human and will be 400 times cheaper, with its conclusions being "incredibly similar" to those reached by experts but in a fraction of the time. Speaking on the launch of Consult, the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, said Consult would save "millions" for taxpayers. "No one should be wasting time on something AI can do quicker and better, let alone wasting millions of taxpayer pounds on outsourcing such work to contractors. "After demonstrating such promising results, Humphrey will help us cut the costs of governing and make it easier to collect and comprehensively review what experts and the public are telling us on a range of crucial issues. "The Scottish government has taken a bold first step. Very soon, I'll be using Consult, within Humphrey, in my own department and others in Whitehall will be using it too - speeding up our work to deliver the plan for change." There is no fixed date yet for Consult, which is still in its trial phase, being implemented in government work, but the belief is that it could be deployed in government offices by the end of 2025.

AI tool used to test feelings about Botox will be rolled out by government

A government AI tool used to test public feeling on different issues is to be rolled out nationwide. The tool, called Consult, was first used by the Scottish government to understand public views on the regulation on non-surgical cosmetic procedures like Botox and fillers. It was able to produce results identical to those of human officials, according to the UK government, and will now be used to review responses from other consultations. It is claimed it could help save human workers from 75,000 days of manual analysis each year and around £20m in staffing. "No one should be wasting time on something AI can do quicker and better, let alone wasting millions of taxpayer pounds on outsourcing such work to contractors," Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said. Consult is part of a set of AI tools called Humphrey, which are named after the senior civil servant in Yes, Minister. The government is using them to speed up the work of civil servants and save money. "The Scottish government has taken a bold first step," said Mr Kyle. "Very soon, I'll be using Consult, within Humphrey, in my own department and others in Whitehall will be using it too - speeding up our work to deliver the plan for change." Read more from climate, science and technology: Warning of heat impact on pregnant women and newborns M&S says customers' personal data taken by hackers Concerns in US as Trump sells jewels of America's AI crown In January, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced he wanted "mainline AI in the veins" of the UK and unlock a supposed £400bn economic opportunity with the technology. A report by Google in April, titled AI Works, suggested that around half of that figure would come from workers using AI to make themselves more efficient. However, there are significant challenges in embedding AI across workforces, with training, infrastructure and messy data all presenting problems. At the moment, there are vast age and gender differences in how comfortable people are with the technology. Research completed by Public First for Google showed that women over 55 are four times less likely to use AI than men under 35.