David Farrar: This would be a good use of AI

Radio NZ report:

The government's top digital officials say they are not aware of any trials of artificial intelligence for summarising parliamentary submissions.

The ABC recently reported that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) had used AI to read and summarise public submissions into parliamentary inquiries, such as the use of consultants in government.

In response to reporter questions, ASIC said it had trialled AI because it was becoming too onerous to read all the submissions.

The commission called it an “ideal and low risk” way to test generative AI technology, the ABC reported.

Actually this would be a very good use of AI.

When summarising submissions, you really want to report the following:

• The arguments for and against each section
• Proposed changes
• Which submitters were for and against each possible change
• Overall sentiment

This is stuff that could be done very efficiently by AI, especially as there may be thousands of submissions which will have common themes.

You'd still want a human to check over the output, but it is a lot quicker to review a summary, than write it from scratch.

I'd be all for select committees and government agencies trialling AI to summarise submissions.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.