The government-developed AI tool Humphrey has been used for the first time to review public responses to a consultation.
The AI tool 'Consult' was first used on a live consultation by the Scottish Government when it was seeking views on how to regulate non-surgical cosmetic procedures.
Consult was built by the UK government as part of the Humphrey suite. It is now set to be used across departments in a bid to cut down the millions of pounds spent on the current process, which often includes outsourcing analysis to contractors.
Consult reviews comments from over 2,000 consultation responses using generative AI and was able to identify key themes that feedback fell into across each of six qualitative questions. The these were checked and refined by experts in the Scottish Government and the AI tool then sorted individual responses into themes and gave officials more time to delve into the detail and evaluate the policy implications of feedback received.
As this was first time Consult was used on a live consultation, experts at the Scottish Government manually reviewed every response too.
Technology secretary Peter Kyle said: "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."
It is believed that across the 500 consultations the government runs annually, the tool could help save officials from around 75,000 days of analysis every year, which costs the government £20 million in staffing costs.
It is hoped the technology will help create a more agile state that can more easily respond to new challenges and effectively deliver the Plan for Change.
The Scottish Government’s public health minister Jenni Minto said: "Using the tool was very beneficial in helping the Scottish Government understand more quickly what people wanted us to hear and our respondents’ range of views. Officials were reassured through the process that the AI was doing a good job, supporting us to undertake the analysis that will inform our next steps.
"Using this tool has allowed the Scottish Government to move more quickly to a focus on the policy questions and dive into the detail of the evidence we’ve been presented with, while remaining confident that we have heard the strong views expressed by respondents."
