HelpFirst: July update

Image: Angela speaking at an event on ‘techno-solutionism’ at The Melting Pot in Edinburgh

A lot happened in July - and we’re not talking about the Euros or the election…

Our ‘intelligent case notes’ product has been in beta testing with a small group of caseworkers in Citizens Advice Scotland’s Extra Help Unit for 3 months now, with exciting improvements:

Next up: full roll-out!

Lucy’s work to develop a chatbot with Citizens Advice Scotland has uncovered something interesting - that it’s just as important to leverage AI for asking questions as answering them.

Often, a chatbot asks a series of pre-defined questions, then tries to provide the most relevant answers. The thing is, most chatbots aren’t great at giving advice, especially in nuanced and sensitive contexts. But is advice the only thing clients are after?

Through careful user research, Lucy found that clients often spend a considerable part of a meeting telling their story and ‘unbundling’ their troubles. Our LLM chatbot, Casey, is now doing the first part of this, enabling a human advisor to then get to the facts of a case more quickly. Casey is now live on the Perth CAB website!

Book your ticket to Lucy & CAS’s free online workshop next Wednesday

The Guardian reported on the dangers of overhyping AI in cancer care: “in the short term, it’s important not to assume that just because AI can do some medical tasks, it can help fix a health system in crisis”.

Azeem Azhar points out that since GPT-3’s May 2020 release, prices have dropped an astounding 99%, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that the trend will continue. We wonder what that will mean for how AI tends to be used - and how we can ensure the intelligence explosion can benefit the people who need it most.

Catalyst and Passion4Social published a joint post about why they’re opting to leave X/Twitter. We too favour building community engagement via LinkedIn, and share their concerns around how the shift in values of X’s organisation have impacted operations.

Speaking of company values, Andy & Angela were interviewed by Government Transformation Magazine. Amongst other things, we talk about how we aim to root everything we do in compassion, craftsmanship and integrity.

…you’re based in the North or Scotland and would like to have coffee. Andy will be speaking at the Disruptive Innovators Network in Edinburgh on 15th August and will be up north for a few days. We’ll also be in Brighton on 8th August if that’s your neck of the woods!

…you missed Andy speaking at the DigiLeaders AICafe and could do with a friendly chat about AI for Good.

…you work for, or advise, an organisation doing casework, and want to see if HelpFirst might be able to free up frontline staff to do more of what they do best.