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Generative AI offers new solutions for improving work efficiency and developing services. Sitra is funding pilot projects to improve the efficiency of legislative drafting using generative AI. The aim is to improve the productivity of public sector work through new AI-based tools.
What is it about?
Generative AI has become a prominent feature of the debate on Europe’s “strategic autonomy”, meaning its ability to act independently, especially in relation to the US and China.
Strategic autonomy in the context of generative AI refers in particular to the availability of open source foundation models, or machine learning models, and the ability to further train models and build services with them.
Initiatives to support the development of AI are increasingly being taken at the EU level, but member states are responsible for development and define their own measures to achieve strategic autonomy.
In Finland, generative AI offers a number of opportunities to improve the productivity of work in the public sector. The public sector still lacks AI expertise, the effective use of which requires close collaboration with the private sector. The use of AI also requires the ability to innovate processes and adopt new methods through experimentation and learning, while accepting possible mistakes as part of the development.
Sitra addresses these challenges and explores ways to make public sector work more efficient through generative AI. We will also seek lessons on the conditions and challenges for the further development of the Finnish language model.
We have started pilot projects with our partners with the aim of developing generative AI apps that can support the work of lawmakers. AI opens up new possibilities for improving the efficiency and quality of drafting work. The legislative drafting process generates a huge number of documents, scattered across different databases, which are very time-consuming for drafters to process and sift through. AI can help reduce the manual work involved in drafting legislation and assist drafters in tasks such as searching, summarising and collating documents.
The services and reports resulting from the pilot projects will increase understanding of the potential of generative AI to improve the efficiency of public sector work. The Finnish language models used for further training in the projects will be published under an open source licence and the solution will be produced by private companies, which in turn may increase private RDI investment. The pilots will also seek lessons on the priorities and investments needed to promote strategic autonomy in the field of generative AI.
What do we do?
Sitra is funding two pilot projects on generative AI based on the Finnish language model. These will be carried out in cooperation with government ministries to improve the legislative process using generative AI. The projects will produce pilot versions of a legislative support service (“demo service”) based on Finnish language models to be tested by lawmakers.
The tools produced in the pilots are intended to support the work of law drafters and help them to find new ways to increase the productivity of public sector work and to understand the challenges that may arise in the use and deployment of AI.
Pilots are being run by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Justice. The trials started in late December 2023 and the first demo versions are expected to be ready in June 2024.
Generative AI in drafting legislation
The Ministry of Transport and Communications is running a pilot project to explore how generative AI can assist drafters in preparing legislation.
The project includes further training in Finnish language models (including FinGPT, Poro) with legislative texts and related materials. The purpose of the language model used in further training is to support the drafters in mapping and screening material during the initial drafting process. In particular, the demo service produced by the pilot will be tested in the national implementation of the EU data legislation.
The language model of the pilot project conducted at the Ministry of Transport and Communications will be used in further training and the demo service will be produced by Futurice Ltd.
Generative AI in the consultation process
The pilot project at the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Justice uses generative AI to produce draft summaries of statements, which are then finalised by the drafters.
The pilot experiments with data from completed consultation rounds. This allows the AI-assisted draft statement summaries to be compared with human-generated ones.
The language model for the Prime Minister’s Office experiment is being used in further training and the demo service will be provided by SiloGen AI Ltd.
Where are we now?
The trials will produce the first phase of demo solutions in February 2024, followed by user testing and collection of feedback.
From March to May, the focus will be on the further development of the demos based on feedback.
The demos and final reports are expected to be completed by the end of June 2024.
