The city of Yokosuka south of Tokyo took a major step to improve efficiency on Thursday as it became the first local government in Japan to start trial use of an artificial intelligence chatbot called ChatGPT. The program was designed to give the local government access to various types of resources, including bulletins, records of meetings, drafts of documents and advice on policy making. The chatbot will be excluded from confidential data and not use the information gathered for training.
The technology was launched a year ago by OpenAI, a US venture and has been tested for a one-month period by Yokosuka with the goal to eventually adopt the AI into its regular operations. Mayor Katsuaki Kamiji is confident that such technology can improve the lives of Yokosuka’s residents.
Japan’s central government is considering to start using ChatGPT as well, for example for helping generate responses for politicians in parliamentary sessions. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is planning to organize a trial shortly. Digital Minister Taro Kono thinks AI is critical for improvements when it comes to work practice in central government offices and agencies.
Takeaki Matsumoto, Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, also highlighted the importance of balancing sensible usage of ChatGPT with properly handling confidential information. He concluded that it is necessary to consider adequate rules rather than suppressing the use of the technology altogether because of any challenges.
OpenAI is a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research laboratory, co-founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. It aims to create safe artificial general intelligence and ensure it is offered to all of humanity. They have developed advanced deep learning algorithms for language processing in the past few years, and ChatGPT was one of their major successes.
