Last week, I wanted to find out the process for my fifteen year old daughter to get her first driver’s license. Sounds simple enough. However, I ended up spending a good portion of my weekend searching for definitive answers — navigating multiple websites, without the option of asking a real, live person. In the very near future, I’ll simply be able to ask a chatbot. The chatbot, using its natural language model trained on relevant government data, would provide a simple, step-by-step guide, explaining the entire process, required documents, and applicable fees.
Using generative artificial intelligence (GAI), state and local governments have the potential to build applications that can interact with citizens in natural language, answering their questions accurately and instantly. Such an application — maybe in the form of a chatbot — could be trained on a diverse range of data from a state’s databases, including information on tax regulations, public utilities, healthcare services, licensing requirements, and more.
Moreover, the GAI-powered chatbot could personalize its responses based on any previous interactions a citizen has had with it. For instance, in my driver’s license example, it could have provided specific information about the nearest office where my daughter could go to take her driver’s test.
In addition to being available 24/7, this GAI-powered chatbot can handle multiple inquiries at once, ensuring no citizen has to wait to get their questions answered. Such a system would drastically reduce wait times, streamline the information retrieval process, and enhance overall citizen satisfaction.
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