AI can improve council efficiency - councillor

Nottinghamshire County Council has been trialling artificial intelligence (AI) software

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help improve the efficiency of council services, a senior councillor has said.

Nottinghamshire County Council has carried out trials of AI software to take notes during meetings and to summarise documents.

Feedback from council staff showed some found it "improved the flow of meetings", while others said the time taken to check AI-generated transcripts outweighed the benefits.

A report on the authority's approach to AI was discussed at a meeting on Thursday.

Paul Martin says AI is "exciting and terrifying at the same time"

Head of technology and digital at the council, Paul Martin, said AI helped to remove the "drudgery" of some tasks.

Speaking to the BBC, he said writing up notes from some formal meetings could take up to eight hours, but using AI could reduce the process to about three hours.

He added there would always be some human oversight to prevent "hallucinations" - where the software produces false information.

"It bases its responses on the data it can access. If that data is incorrect or it changes, it will produce a different result or an incorrect result," he said.

"It's not trying to mislead, it's just responding to the data it can access."

He also acknowledged AI can be "scary".

"The technology is really, really exciting and terrifying at the same time, but it's here now so we've got to embrace it and use it sensitively," he said.

The council's cabinet member for finance and resources, Richard Jackson, said using AI could improve efficiency by freeing up time for front-line staff, but insisted it would not result in job losses.

"It'll make people's roles more productive and I think people will see the difference, not in a reduction of the number of people we employ, but through improvements to the services we deliver," he said.

The council says the technology can also be used to help generate Education Health and Care (EHC) plans - a legal document that describes a child or young person's special educational needs.

Inspectors said in 2023 that too many children in the county were waiting longer than the 20-week target to receive an EHC plan.

Council leader Sam Smith said in December that he was confident Nottinghamshire would be in line with the national average for EHC plans by the end of the current academic year.