The government's Actuary Department (GAD) is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help government departments process consultation responses. This helps clients analyse responses submitted by people in industry and the public.

They said this has helped clients from government departments across the UK.

Recently the GAD used AI software to help categorise and analyse almost 120 responses for a consultation issued by a central government department. They reported that they processed close to half a million words through either the use of AI or reading responses.

They said they had to consider how best to use AI to produce an initial summary of the responses that were received. For example, they grouped respondents by industry type so that the AI could pick out themes within these groups.

Additionally, they used the AI program ChatGPT to summarise the largest consultation responses (about 50 out of the number received). The team fed in all these responses for each question and instructed the AI program to summarise views in 1 to 2 paragraphs. The output was read by an actuary to ensure it reflected a technically correct summary.

The output was then collated into 40 summarised responses (one per question) from which they were able to draw out key themes and collate replies.

Actuary Laura Brunton worked on the project and said: “While we read all the responses, the AI output was a really useful starting point to analyse the responses to make sure the output was coherently presented. We undertook further editing and were able to ensure that the AI created an initial summarised view which we could use to build in the views of all respondents.”