Australian Public Service exploring opportunities for Artificial Intelligence tools after the rising popularity of ChatGPT

The emergence of accessible Artificial Intelligence tools such as the chatbot ChatGPT has increased access to the technology and prompted questions about how it can be deployed.

It's a matter already being investigated by the Australian Public Service, with the Digital Transformation Agency and the Department of Industry, Science Energy and Resources tasked with identifying cases where AI can be used, and developing guardrails to facilitate it.

Anthony Murfett, head of the division for technology and digital at the Department of Industry, said the government can provide an example of responsible use of AI and improve efficiency.

"In the future, if we have a generative AI, on bespoke data that is protected, and contained, there's immense opportunities for us really to be more efficient," Mr Murfett told the Institute of Public Administration Australia's Work with Purpose podcast, released on Monday.

"And that's just in a policy sense, of course, our service delivery areas have immense opportunity to think through how this can be used."

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But Mr Murfett also emphasised the APS must not lose sight of trust, accountability and transparency when it comes to implementing AI.

"And importantly, also working with our executives to explain the technologies and the implications of being very transparent as we go through and play with what is going to be a really exciting time in the future."

AI is already in place within the department's AusIndustry team, which delivers services aimed at supporting businesses to grow, and has been for the past year, manager of the AusIndustry Insights team Sally Bayley-Nelson told the podcast.

The team mostly uses the AI tool to analyse large amounts of unstructured text, Ms Bayley-Nelson said.

"So to summarise somebody's long meeting notes into a short paragraph, or to categorise business intel into key themes or topics of interest, like manufacturing, or supply chains or natural disaster impacts, or to rewrite existing text in a certain style that, say, removes identifying information about a business," she said.

"And we've reached the point now where the first draft of one of our weekly reports is automatically generated by AI and process automation."

The data is stored on a server not connected to the internet, and all of the work is checked by "at least one, but often more, sets of human eyes", Ms Bayley-Nelson added.

"So the robots are coming for our jobs, and I'm all about it," she said. "There are huge benefits for my team, from a resourcing perspective.

"I've got a small team and the fact that we can automate that first draft saves us about 50 per cent of our workload.

"And it's that lower value kind of process-y stuff that frees us up for more interesting higher value, dare I say more human work. And also lets us start to tap into data sets that we just haven't been able to look into when it's just with people's eyes alone."

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