The government has unveiled a $1m fellowship grant, backed by Meta and the Alan Turing Institute, to build technology for public services.
The 12-month secondment in government will see fellows use open source artificial intelligence (AI) models such as Meta’s Llama 3.5 to help create new tools to deliver Labour’s Plan for Change.
“Open source AI models are helping researchers and developers make major scientific and medical breakthroughs, and they have the potential to transform the delivery of public services, too,” said Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer at Meta. “We hope these fellows will make a big, positive difference and help show just how valuable open source AI can be to governments and society more broadly.”
According to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), rolling out open source AI models widely could reduce costs to the taxpayer, improve speed and consistency, and deliver value for money.
Jean Innes, CEO of the Alan Turing Institute, said open source technologies can help the government increase productivity, support decision-making and deliver better public services.
“These fellowships will offer an innovative way to match AI experts with the real-world challenges our public services are facing,” said Innes.
Areas the AI experts will work on include high-security use cases for AI across the public sector, such as language translation in a national security context. DSIT said they could also work on expanding Humphrey, the bundle of AI tools that help civil servants more effectively deliver on the requests of ministers, to remove the administrative burden involved in summarising documents, taking notes and summarising consultation responses.
Labour recently began rolling out AI customer service assistant Caddy to help staff access expert guidance on grant decisions.
Prime minister Keir Starmer recently said he was “determined to seize” the opportunity of AI to transform the state, making clear that no one in government should be doing something AI can do better and cheaper.
Technology secretary Peter Kyle described the fellowship as “the best of AI in action”, saying it was “open, practical and built for the public good”.
He added: “It’s about delivery, not just ideas – creating real tools that help government work better for people.”
The fellowship coincides with the news that Caddy has been open sourced, which means call centres across the world will be able to benefit from the tech.
Currently being used across six Citizens Advice call centres, it has been trained to help experts answer queries on everything from managing debt to getting legal help and knowing your rights as a consumer.
DSIT said early test results showed that 80% of Caddy-generated responses were ready to use with no revisions, and advisors using Caddy were twice as confident in providing accurate answers.
“We’ve already seen the potential. Caddy – developed with Citizens Advice and now helping Cabinet Office teams – shows how open AI tools can boost productivity, improve decision-making and support frontline staff,” said Kyle.
Along with the fellowship grant, the government has also expanded its AI Knowledge Hub to help government departments learn how other departments are deploying AI systems. As part of its next phase, new features will be added, including a Prompt Library to help teams use AI to boost everyday productivity and deliver faster, better services.
