{"id":71633,"date":"2025-10-10T11:56:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T11:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/71633\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:56:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T11:56:14","slug":"somerset-spending-1-56m-on-ai-for-radical-rethink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/71633\/","title":{"rendered":"Somerset spending \u00a31.56m on AI for &#8216;radical rethink&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Spending more than \u00a31m on artificial intelligence (AI) could stop up to 256 families being made homeless each year, a council says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Somerset Council&#8217;s cabinet has agreed to invest \u00a31.56m in AI and data analysis in a &#8220;radical rethink&#8221; to fight rising demand and costs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Some of the money will go towards creating a system which collects and collates residents&#8217; data currently held by different parts of the council into a &#8220;single view&#8221;. It is hoped this will identify people and families at risk of homelessness sooner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Councillor Theo Butt-Philip, the council&#8217;s lead member for transformation, said the move would help it &#8220;do things differently and do things better&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;With demand and costs for services continuing to rise, we know we need to radically rethink how we operate to put more focus on prevention,&#8221; said Mr Butt-Philip.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">He said the &#8220;long-term investment&#8221; would &#8220;build capability across the whole council&#8221; and help &#8220;make the most of the opportunities provided by better use of data and AI&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The council believes the increased use of AI will allow staff to identify gaps in support for people who need the council&#8217;s help.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The money, which has come from the council&#8217;s capital funding pot, will also go towards adding 1 new staff to the council&#8217;s AI and data team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spending more than \u00a31m on artificial intelligence (AI) could stop up to 256 families being made homeless each&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-71633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}