Faced with a labor shortage and intrigued by the potential for improving efficiency, one Japanese city made the decision to use ChatGPT artificial intelligence bot amongst its employees to see if it was value all the hype.
The city of Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture on Thursday began a month-long trial allowing each of its 4,000 city employees to use ChatGPT OpenAI for administrative tasks as a way to speed up operations, becoming the first city in the country to adopt the latest technology. Japan Times reports.
“With the population decreasing, the variety of staff is limited. Nonetheless, there are various administrative challenges,” said Takayuki Samukawa, a public relations representative for Yokosuki’s digital management department.
“That is why our goal is to use useful information and communication technologies [Information Communication Technology] tools like ChatGPT to unlock human resources for things that may only be done in a person-to-person format.”
Samukawa said the city plans to use ChatGPT during the trial period for tasks akin to summarizing and redacting documents and developing copies for marketing and communication purposes, according to the report.
While Yokosuka is the first city in Japan to give ChatGPT a shot, the federal government has signaled it is open to adopting the tool nationwide following a visit by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this month.
Altman met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and other officials on April 10 to discuss the advantages and risks of the latest chatbot.
Afterwards, the CEO said he was considering opening an OpenAI office in the country, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said that when technology security concerns were resolved, the government would work to “use AI to reduce the burden on national government officials.”
Reuters contributed to this report.