I haven't tried this but in principle I think this sort of finding a needle in a haystack situation (finding the correct path to assistance in a government service) is one of the rare circumstances where a well-crafted chatbot can be genuinely useful rather than just irritating.
1. decent search, if you mean something other than what the browser provides, isn't part of a static document
2. the nature of the problem statement "needle in a haystack" suggests obstacles to traditional text search, eg. too many false positives to be helpful for natural searches and challenges to constructing more specific ones.
language models introduce new possible solutions to this ie semantic search. poorly-designed chatbots could be worse than a basic search, sure
1. I mean static documents plus decent search you can find the right documents.
2. Yes, but its difficult to get a chat bot to function well over the wide range of services a government offers and the wide range of users who need government services.
One of the most annoying chatbots I have ever come across was on a UK government site. The DVLA. "lets tell you what you already know and not answer the question".
Possibly something well designed might make it easier, but I have found most of gov.uk to be very usable and helpful.
How does the form factor of a chat bot affect the quality of a search running on a backend? It has the benefit of obviously having a semantic search affordance which a standard search field doesn't.
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2. the nature of the problem statement "needle in a haystack" suggests obstacles to traditional text search, eg. too many false positives to be helpful for natural searches and challenges to constructing more specific ones.
language models introduce new possible solutions to this ie semantic search. poorly-designed chatbots could be worse than a basic search, sure
graemep · · focus · HN ↗
2. Yes, but its difficult to get a chat bot to function well over the wide range of services a government offers and the wide range of users who need government services.
One of the most annoying chatbots I have ever come across was on a UK government site. The DVLA. "lets tell you what you already know and not answer the question".
Possibly something well designed might make it easier, but I have found most of gov.uk to be very usable and helpful.
nfw2 · · focus · HN ↗