I always know when something has reached ‘peak’ buzz territory when my mother quizzes me about it. 3 years ago, she asked me “James, should I buy some of those Bitcoins?” This weekend, the line of questioning was “Should I be worried about AI?”. My answer was, “Not yet”. AI and automation technologies have been around for decades, but they are now gaining real traction due to recent advances. I think we are in a time where we must act to shape our own future of how we want to manage and work alongside them. 

What is automation and AI?

For our work, and to ensure we’re all on the same page, we are using the following definitions:

  • Automation – use of technology to perform tasks without (or reduced) human involvement. 

  • AI – an umbrella term for a range of technologies and approaches that often attempt to mimic human thought to solve complex tasks. 

  • Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – a subset of automation that uses software robots to perform simple and rule-based tasks through user interfaces. Although this can be combined with an AI "brain" to enable more complex tasks.

Based on these definitions, you’ll see how their application can enable improvements to digital public services, making them simpler, faster, and cheaper. However, these tools also carry risks, such as risk of bias, lack of transparency and tech insecurity.

ChatGPT – Granting wishes?

ChatGPT – a Generative Pretrained Transformer, is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI and released in November 2022. It interacts with users in a conversational way and can be used to organise, summarise or write new text. In 5 days, it had more than 1 million subscribers. For comparison, it took Netflix almost 3 and a half years to reach the same milestone.

12 months ago, most people who knew about ChatGPT were the engineers from OpenAI who had helped create it, fast forward to today, and ChatGPT is everywhere. OpenAI has also integrated DALL·E 3 with ChatGPT, so you can now create unique images from a simple conversation!

Microsoft have partnered with OpenAI and are beginning to bring some of this power to the desktop through Microsoft 365 Copilot, with a particular focus on using AI to help users in their day-to-day work. 

The genie is out of the bottle and people are both equally excited and scared.

Supporting you on this journey

We have lots of interest in this area and we want to ensure we are providing support that is of value.

To date, we have: 

  • curated an AI webinar series on topics such as the Public Sector Equality Duty, procurement and bias

  • set up a cross-sector standards board, who will discuss which relevant standards would be useful for the Welsh public sector to adopt (including things such as the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard) 

  • held an event in north Wales with The Alan Turing Institute to discuss practical applications of AI in the public sector

We want to know from you what else would be helpful. Over the next few weeks, we will be speaking with local authorities, arm’s length bodies, health and care teams and Welsh Government colleagues to understand what work they are already doing in automation and AI, along with future plans.

If you would like to contribute to this discussion, contact james.alderman@digitalpublicservices.gov.wales.

We’ve also developed a short survey, and all the feedback we get, will help us shape the support we provide in the future.