GOV.UK chatbot halted by hallucinations
“AI firms must address hallucinations before GOV.UK chatbot can roll out, digital chief claims”:
Trials of a generative AI-powered chatbot for GOV.UK users have found ongoing issues with so-called hallucinations that must be addressed before the technology can be widely deployed, according to one of the government’s digital leaders. [….] Speaking at an event this morning, Paul Willmott said: “We have experimented with a generative advice [tool] on GOV.UK. You will just say ‘I’m trying to do this’, or ‘I’m annoyed about this’… The challenge we are having – which is exactly the same as in the commercial sector – is what to do with the 1% of hallucinations where the agent starts to get challenging, or abusive – or even seductive.” Even if only present in a tiny minority of instances, these issues mean that GOV.UK Chat is not yet ready for widespread deployment, according to Willmott. Addressing hallucinations will require the support of the likes of OpenAI and other creates of large language models. “Until we have managed to iron that out – which will require the support of the foundational model creators – we won’t be able to put this live,” he said.
This is hardly surprising, but it’s good to see it being acknowledged and the brakes being applied.(tags: ai llms hallucations confabulation gov.uk chatbots chatgpt uk)