OK, there's a lot of negative comments here, but this is a great idea at a high level. It really is hard to figure out where to do a thing and it's also very easy to get phished. If they can figure out how to help people get all the services they're eligible for that'll be an amazing improvement for the people.
I agree in general, but how do you resolve the problem that people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance? People being lead astray with information from the government could lead to very serious consequences, up to and including imprisonment.
Honest question, I had the same issue when my work wanted me to stick a chatbot in front of our HR portal and I never resolved it to my satisfaction.
> but how do you resolve the problem that people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance
You have to measure that problem against the status quo, which is that current government websites are very hard to understand and leave people with very little idea of what’s going on.
Speak for yourself (your country). In the EU I have interacted with several government websites which are better, faster, clearer than most other websites. Not always perfect (what is) but not frustrating either. People love to complain, but year over year I have seen steady improvements in usability. Phone support has always been better than any commercial entity, too (or it was, I haven’t needed it in years).
To enhance the status quo you don’t need LLMs, you need people who care.
As an American, I've never had issues navigating government websites. That said, I'm also not part of the apparently huge portion of our population who can't read above 6th grade, which I suspect is more of the issue than anything said here thus far.
Well we can’t exactly hang those people out to dry after failing them in our educational system. I refuse to believe that many Americans are simply incapable of reading beyond that level. I believe it is a failure of our culture.
I didn't say anything about them being incapable. That said I'm curious what a chatbot solves for people you concede have been failed by our culture to a degree where they can't read?
You can talk to the chat bot, or the input prompt and then in turn read out the results by screen reader. Does not solve the comprehension aspect though
maherbeg · · focus · HN ↗
gthrow12345 · · focus · HN ↗
Honest question, I had the same issue when my work wanted me to stick a chatbot in front of our HR portal and I never resolved it to my satisfaction.
rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
You have to measure that problem against the status quo, which is that current government websites are very hard to understand and leave people with very little idea of what’s going on.
latexr · · focus · HN ↗
To enhance the status quo you don’t need LLMs, you need people who care.
ToucanLoucan · · focus · HN ↗
kulahan · · focus · HN ↗
ToucanLoucan · · focus · HN ↗
seb1204 · · focus · HN ↗