All public agents soon to be equipped with a home-made ChatGPT? On Thursday, February 6, Laurent Marcangeli, Minister of Public Action, and Clara Chappaz, Minister Delegate for Digital Affairs and Artificial Intelligence (AI), drew up the government's roadmap for AI in the public service, a few days before the Paris Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence, on February 10 and 11.
Unsurprisingly, the government explains that it wants to "accelerate" the adoption of AI in all public sectors, after several experiments conducted in recent months. "Tools like AI can save (public agents) time", time that could then be spent with users, recalled the Minister Delegate for AI and Digital Affairs, Clara Chappaz.
An argument already formulated by Stanislas Guerini a year earlier. When the then Minister of Transformation and Civil Service launched the first experiment in using generative AI in public services, he had the same objective: "to gain efficiency and save time on certain tasks, and thus strengthen human contact between public service agents and the French people".
AI already used to fight fraud and control public spending...
Since then, AI has been used in many public services. "We will not discover AI in 2025", "the State and the administration are already using it", confirmed the current Minister of Public Action, Laurent Marcangeli, listing in no particular order all the areas that have experimented with the technology.
In addition to "the fight against fraud and the instruction of aid to businesses", projects have been carried out in "the control of public spending, relations with State suppliers", the anonymization of decisions for the Ministry of Justice, or even the management of human resources within National Education.
With this foundation, the Minister of Public Service came to explain the future stages of the "Government strategy for the dissemination of AI in the public sector", a strategy decided within an interministerial committee on artificial intelligence chaired by the Prime Minister which took place early in the morning.
The privileged French nuggets
While the minister did not give any figures, he assured that AI tools will be deployed in all ministries this year. The government promises that for this deployment, the State will favor "our French nuggets" of sector, in particular by using the lever of public procurement. However, it will be possible to " partner with technology leaders who will help us ensure access to existing best practices (…)", he adds.
The key announcement of the day was that all 5.7 million public agents will be able to benefit from "the equivalent of what we call ChatGPT", a conversational agent that can be used to do research, prepare summaries, and reports. The idea is to "offer the same thing in a French and secure version", declared Laurent Marcangeli, without specifying which LLM is in question: Albert, the AI developed by the State? Mistral, the AI developed by the French start-up? The agents will all be trained in this technology.
(We will not) "sell public data to foreign powers"
The objective of the government's strategy is to develop "a trusted AI that supports France's ambition to once again become a powerful State and a European leader in technology", the minister said. This trusted AI will always have a public agent in the loop, and always the highest level of requirement in terms of data protection and security, he specifies.
“We will not be (…) members of a government who will sell public data to foreign powers,” insists Laurent Marcangeli. AI is not intended to replace public officials, the politician insisted, but to "simplify the lives" of civil servants.
What about associations or the Defender of Rights, who are precisely concerned about the increasing use of AI and algorithms by the administration?
The subject was not raised by the two ministers. On the sidelines of the event, the government also announced that it will make available 35 "turnkey" sites that can accommodate data centers in France, essential infrastructures for the development of AI.
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