Elections 2024: Chatbot aims to help voters make informed decisions
A chatbot developed by a Leuven technology company scrutinises decisions made by the Flemish government to help voters make an informed choice in the elections on 9 June.
The free Regeringsrobot created by Data Minded searches tens of thousands of government documents from the past five years and compares them with the 2019 coalition agreement, to see which pledges have been kept. Users can ask questions such as “What has the government done to address the teacher shortage?” or “What is the nitrogen decree?” The tool provides a factual, clear and objective answer.
“When a user asks the robot a question about a topic, it looks up the government decisions that are most related to that topic, and briefly summarises the decisions using a Large Language Model such as OpenAI’s GPT-4,” said Kris Peeters, CEO of Data Minded. “Finally, the robot adds a source reference to the original documents. That means users can always verify the answers themselves.”
All government documents are stored in a vector database, a technology that allows documents to be compared. They cover topics including Brussels, animal welfare, economy, climate, justice and education.
Peeters also created a tool ahead of the 2014 elections that compared parties' word usage in their manifestos. “That was less sophisticated: people could search for specific terms in party manifestos and check how often they were used,” he said. “Now we have added a layer of artificial intelligence to it, so there are more options for users.”
The chatbot is available at regeringsrobot.be.
#FlandersNewsService | © PHOTO BELPRESS
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