Artificial intelligence is entering the public service! Gabriel Attal unveiled Albert, a sovereign AI for public service agents in the fields of taxes, the environment and education.
The release of ChatGPT created a tidal wave on the Internet, but also within tech companies. Each has begun to integrate generative AI into its services and products, embarking on a veritable race to show who has the biggest one. But after having invaded the private sector, it is also arriving in the public. Last October, the Government began an experiment with artificial intelligence in the public service, with 1,000 volunteer agents – in family allowance funds (CAF), retirement insurance, prefectures, etc. – who were equipped with a tool using AI – more precisely with Claude, an “ethical” conversational robot developed by the American start-up Anthropic – to support them in writing online responses to users (see our article ). A way to devote “more time for humans”.
This time, the Government is moving up a gear. Traveling to Sceaux, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal unveiled, this Tuesday, April 23, a series of artificial intelligence tools intended to improve the efficiency of public services. “I announce to you that we have developed a sovereign, French artificial intelligence, which will revolutionize our public services and which we are now putting at the service of the French”he declared, calling for “choose AI” and not to “undergo”, as reported BFMTV. Called Albert, it was developed by a team of experts within the Dinum datalab (Interministerial Digital Directorate) from June 2023. “Thanks to them, France is the first European country to inaugurate 100% sovereign AI and put it at the service of its public services”assured Gabriel Attal.
AI in public services: helping tax agents in their work
Albert’s deployment within the administration has four objectives: “simpler procedures, faster deadlines, more secure responses and more effective public policies”, to use the words of the Prime Minister. The first to benefit will be the tax administration. Concretely, AI will help agents analyze the 16 million annual online requests from taxpayers by automatically generating pre-responses adapted for civil servants. Public officials will then be responsible for checking the responses, modifying them if necessary and sending them to users.
The objective is to simplify procedures, reduce response time and facilitate the work of tax agents. “Regulatory analysis will be automated, responses will be drastically accelerated and the work of agents will be made less painful and more interesting”, explains Gabriel Attal. AI will therefore take up more and more space in administration. It was already used to flush out tax evaders, by automatically detecting a certain number of undeclared assets on public databases. 140,000 cases of fraud have already been identified, which allowed the State to recover 40 million euros.
AI in public services: accelerating the ecological transition
The Government is also counting on artificial intelligence to support other services in the environmental field, such as the regional directorates for the environment, planning and housing (Dreal), which deal with related issues. to the ecological transition. For example, this will involve examining 4,000 environmental projects each year more quickly. “These are projects which are hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages long and the processing of which is currently very long”, specifies Gabriel Attal. The goal is to save “time and money and accelerate the ecological transition”, thanks to the shortening of deadlines. This concerns in particular “wind projects” Or “urban development” of which “the instruction is very long”.
After, remember that artificial intelligence is not the miracle solution, its use having a significant ecological cost. The powerful computers needed to power AI models consume enormous amounts of water and energy, and the manufacturing of these machines has a significant environmental impact – extraction of natural resources, greenhouse gas emissions, etc. – as well. as the management of electronic waste when they become obsolete. Remember that ChatGOT-3 would have required 1,283 MWh during its training period, the equivalent of 274 French homes for an entire year… So, of course, Albert is not yet at this level, but it is a point which deserves to be underlined.
AI in public services: Aristotle to the rescue of students
The Government is counting on another AI, called Aristotle, to help the education sector. Launched next school year, it will offer quizzes and assessments for students to help them with their revisions, in order to “to improve their bachelor’s degree success rate”. It will also make more than 3,000 hours of lessons accessible to students with disabilities, by automatically converting the sound of videos into subtitles.
Coming back to Albert, it should subsequently be transposed to other public services. It could, for example, be used to transcribe legal hearings and medical reports, or facilitate the filing of complaints. “So many other cases of AI in our public services will emerge over the coming months: from the detection of fires and forest fires using augmented drones to the HR management of public service personnel”, concluded the Prime Minister. The datalab team, at the origin of AI, is currently in discussions with some 70 various administrations, both central and territorial, with the aim of co-constructing and developing new applications based on Albert.