Somerset spending £1.56m on AI for ‘radical rethink’

Spending more than £1m on artificial intelligence (AI) could stop up to 256 families being made homeless each year, a council says.

Somerset Council’s cabinet has agreed to invest £1.56m in AI and data analysis in a “radical rethink” to fight rising demand and costs.

Some of the money will go towards creating a system which collects and collates residents’ data currently held by different parts of the council into a “single view”. It is hoped this will identify people and families at risk of homelessness sooner.

Councillor Theo Butt-Philip, the council’s lead member for transformation, said the move would help it “do things differently and do things better”.