Maybe you have seen the videos of IBM's supercomputer Watson beating games show champions in the USA recently. If not there are a couple of videos of Watson in action on the Artificial Intelligence page.
Winning a games show is cool, but there are many other applications for this technology that could be of benefit to local government.
One possible application is a whole of government question answering system. It could be used by public servants, local government staff, elected members & the general public. The system could work its way through the ever expanding treasure trove of government open data, and make it much more useful to everyone. Watson was named for the founder of IBM, so perhaps the Australian Government version could be named Barton.
Watson was excellent at answering Who, What, & When questions, and these are the types of questions people are asking every day.
It would be cool & useful, and it would encourage councils and government departments to open up their data even more.
What do you think? Vote below.
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