The UK government will trial large language models to help ministers analyze and draft documents as part of a push to overhaul public services using AI.
Oh dear.
You know, this problem was briefly solved in 1940 by the memo below:-
To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points.
I ask my colleagues and their staff to see to it that their repots are shorter.
1) The aim should be reports which set out the main points in a series of short, crisp paragraphs.
2) If a report relies on detailed analysis of some complicated factors, or on statistics these should be set out in an Appendix.
3) Often the occasion is best met by submitting not a full-dress report, but an aide-memoire consisting of headings only which can be expanded orally if needed.
4) Let us have an end of such phrases as these:-
"It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations....." or, "consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect....."
Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.
Reports drawn up on the lines I propose may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officalese jargon. But the saving in time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking.
Winston Spencer Churchill. 1940
Perhaps this memo could be reissued? Or promotion criteria changed so that promotion depends upon effective communication?
Mind you, George Orwell had a few things to say on that subject.
The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.
Simply put, in any one of the three cases first cited by Orwell an AI is going to be equally as incapable of divining the meaning as anybody else reading the text. If you want to radically overhaul public services then the solution would appear be that authors of a communique of gibberish should be reassigned to a level more commensurate with their abilities.
ie; demote or fire people who do it.
This would surely significantly improve productivity in government considerably more than "AI" stands any chance of doing.