Guido hears that the Cabinet Office will be using artificial intelligence to draft answers to official questions tabled by MPs and Lords from next week. When recess ends on 1st June…
Parliamentary questions are tabled by MPs and answered by ministers twenty days later or so. They are basically an expedited and public FOI service for parliamentarians…
According to leaked plans, policy teams of civil servants are set to receive the original tabled question along with an initial AI draft. Guido understands AI systems will have access to departmental briefing papers, Hansard, and answers to previous PQs. Across-the-board access…
This draft will then be processed by response teams, redrafted by a human if necessary, then approved and sent for ministerial confirmation. A government source said: “The answers will only be as good as the source material.” Speeding up government…
Parliamentary Questions are a vital resource for opposition and MPs of all stripes to seek information and official statements on all aspects of government. The Tories have used them to great effect under this government so far despite reporting having a difficult time filing some questions with the Commons table office. Now parliamentarians will be getting replies from bots…
Lucy Powell told Sky News that the Ed Miliband-Russell Brand interview happened in part because the ‘social media age’ had not begun by 2015:
“Look, I mean, he approached the Labour Party, he approached the campaign team, and we’re in very different times now. We weren’t in the social media age at the time – where you could maybe search things up and see allegations about somebody at the time. and as I say, if there was any suggestion at all, we were dealing with someone who was a known sexual predator at the time, then, of course, you know, no one would have done that. But as I say, he was a well known public figure. Lots of people from Hollywood to the BBC to many others gave this person a very, very powerful platform. And we didn’t know at the time, unfortunately. It was a different era.”