AI is being given the tall order of deciphering what exactly happens in those long meetings on Parliament Hill.
What happened: Ottawa is testing a new in-house AI tool called ParlBrief that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes parliamentary committee meetings. According to documents obtained by The Logic, the tool could save public servants over 500 hours of work a year.
- Every committee meeting requires a summarized report within three hours of completion, which leads to extra work and costly overtime.
Catch-up: Since Ottawa has strict rules against public servants plugging sensitive data into public AI tools like ChatGPT, they cobbled together their own. ParlBrief uses bits and pieces of models developed by Toronto-based Cohere, as well as Mistral and OpenAI.
Why it matters: ParlBrief is part of Ottawa’s plan to roll out a roster of in-house AI tools to make the slow wheels of government bureaucracy spin a little faster. Just last month, the feds announced a partnership with Cohere to help bring more AI tools into the public sector.
Zoom out: The feds already rolled out AgPal last year — a chatbot that helps farmers access info on government financing and regulations — and have used AI to evaluate some funding proposals. But as new leadership sorts out how to pay for billions in new spending, finding other ways to save money will become even more important.—LA