NTT Advanced Technology (NTT-AT) will begin trial operation of an AI agent system (counter response agent system) this fall in collaboration with Katsushika Ward and Gyosei (Koto Ward), which handles information systems for government administration. NTT-AT announced this on April 24. NTT-AT has been providing “Katsushika Chat,” an AI system that generates answers to questions from employees based on information specific to Katsushika Ward, since June 2024. For example, it has supported a variety of tasks, such as extracting answers on specific themes from past assembly minutes and proposing new measures based on the ward’s policies and systems. Meanwhile, in recent years, Katsushika Ward and other local governments across the country have been facing the challenge of passing on work know-how to younger employees as veteran employees retire and are replaced by new generations.
In particular, in counter operations, the absence of veteran employees makes it difficult to respond smoothly to resident inquiries, which is a problem that directly affects resident services. In response to this situation, many local governments across the country are trying to maintain and improve resident services by further promoting the use of generative AI to enable even inexperienced employees to provide high-quality responses. The counter response agent system aims to be an accompanying AI agent that uses voice recognition to capture the conversation between the consultation and the counter employee, and helps employees obtain appropriate information without complicated operations. The aim is to support smooth responses to consultations by timely supplementing the knowledge and skills of employees and providing guidance on appropriate procedures and processing methods.
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In this trial operation, a prototype will first be built and applied to actual counter operations. This will identify technical issues, advance improvements to the system, and aim for a practical system. The existing Katsushika Chat will be expanded with the addition of counter response work manuals and related books provided by Gyosei, expanding the ward’s own database. Based on manuals, laws, notices, past Q&A examples, etc., the generative AI will suggest response examples to employees, enabling one-stop guidance. For input support, a voice assist function is installed, and voice recognition and automatic prompt generation reduce the burden of keyboard input on employees. In addition, NTT-AT‘s highly directional small microphone, the FR-1100, suppresses noise and separates speakers, improving the accuracy of voice recognition and thereby improving the quality of responses provided by Katsushika Chat.
SOURCE: Yahoo
