Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether he plans to complete algorithmic transparency reports for the ten pilot programs being developed by the Incubator for AI.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The Government has made transparency around automated decision-making a priority through the publication of the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS). The ATRS was endorsed by the Data Standards Authority (DSA), and the first approved version was published in January 2023. Any standards that have been designated by the DSA have an expectation that they will be adopted where there is a use case.
The i.AI team are committed to the development of safe, secure and transparent government AI. The pilot programmes are at various stages of development, and each will be subject to robust testing and evaluation in collaboration with other government expert teams including CDDO, DSIT and the AISI. This will include the completion of Algorithmic Transparency Standards for projects that move past Alpha stages, informed by user testing and pilot programmes.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer on 18 January 2024 to Question 9578 on Artificial Intelligence, in which private offices the Red Box Copilot is being tested.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The Red Box Copilot has been made available to the Private Offices of Minister Burghart, of the Cabinet Secretary, and of the Chief Operating Officer of the Civil Service, in which it is either currently or will shortly be going through more formal testing.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether he plans to complete an algorithmic transparency report using the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard for the Artificial Intelligence Red Box ministers are piloting.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The government has made transparency around automated decision-making a priority through the publication of the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS). The ATRS was endorsed by the Data Standards Authority (DSA), and the first approved version was published in January 2023.
The Red Box Copilot is currently in Alpha, being tested in a controlled, transparent manner in a small number of private offices.
Any standards that have been designated by the DSA have an expectation that they will be adopted where there is a use case. As the AI Red Box is being piloted, the Government will consider the publication of an ATRS record, post evaluation.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove and Portslade)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the GOV.UK chat experiment.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Government Digital Service (GDS) tested an early prototype of a Large Language Model (LLM) powered chatbot (GOV.UK Chat) in December 2023. Feedback, and the quality of answers provided, were analysed from 200 users.
Nearly 70% of users found the prototype-generated responses to be useful and the answers were assessed to be accurate 80% of the time.
Ensuring the highest level of accuracy and efficiency is a priority, which is why the next phase of development and testing will focus on how to improve accuracy of the model and explore how users could best discover and use the service.