Can ChatGPT solve slow govt office processes?

ChatGPT has taken the world by storm with its human-like unique responses. On the global platform, Google with Bard and Microsoft with ChatGPT are already in a race to master conversational AI. Nationally, reports say a small team in the Indian IT ministry is trying to use the AI chatbot to answer questions on government schemes through WhatsApp. 

The Indian government wants to harness the power of ChatGPT to answer queries regarding government schemes. And its target audience for the first phase is - farmers.   

The language barrier: You must be wondering how the target audience (Indian farmers) can benefit from the English-speaking ChatGPT. This is where the small team reportedly called Bhashini is trying to help.

• Bhashini is trying to build a WhatsApp chatbot that relies on ChatGPT-generated answers to send replies in Indian languages. 
• The team is trying to build a chatbot that would understand inputs in different Indian languages and also respond in those Indian languages while relying on information from ChatGPT.
• Users can either type their queries or send voice notes. 
• Currently, testing is underway for 12 languages including English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Odia, Bengali, and Assamese.
• Reportedly, a prototype of this chatbot based on ChatGPT was presented to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the World Economic Forum at Davos. 

Since, ChatGPT is built on LLM (Large Language Model), which learns through a complex set of data in a specific language, Bhashini team will likely have to build a large database of Indian language samples.   

Does ChatGPT even work for answering questions on Indian government schemes? We asked ChatGPT questions on Digi Yatra and PM Awas Yojana. 

• ChatGPT was able to answer questions on what the schemes and initiatives are and how to use them. 
• But with regards to Digi Yatra, a question regarding where the initiative was currently active was wrong or outdated.  
• Since ChatGPT is currently limited to its current affairs knowledge till 2021, it said that Digi Yatra was active at 7 airports instead of just three. The rest of the airports will be enabled with Digi Yatra by March. 

Chatbots in customer service aren't anything new. And the Indian government has been using it for a while. But chatbots are limited in their responses and nowhere near as good as ChatGPT. If you have tried using a chatbot service of a company you would know the pain of trying to get through the AI bot which is unable to handle your request or is giving the same recycled replies without solving the problem. 

So, it needs to be seen how well Bhashini's Indian language-based ChatGPT will work and whether we will see a better customer service chatbot with the rise of conversational AI.