Facts

What is this? Well, we took a bunch of documents fromwe ingested some data from the Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Policy Site and we indexed them using the OpenAI GPT API. That makes it waaaaay easier to search for answers to basic things without having to read big legal documents or you know talk to an actual lawyer. The answers are in plain english and you can also ask follow up questions based on what you typed.

But can't I just ask ChatGPT that?

Yeah but nah but yeah. You probably can with the right prompt saying something like "Please give me advice on the relevant NZ legislation if I ask the following question: {your question}. Firstly that will only be up to date as of 2021 which is when the model is trained, but it might be ok. Since we ingested the documents in April 2023 the answers will be more up to date, but that's not really the main point. We only indexed public documents because that's a nice way to show you can index any documents you like. Which means if you have private documents then you can give them the GPT treatment too. Some things that immediately come to mind; Law firms - index all you private case files. Software companies - Index your wikis and knowledge bases. I asked GPT what industries would benefit from this and here's the answer:

Legal:

Quickly locate relevant case laws, precedents, and legal definitions from a large repository of legal documents. Identify potential risks or legal requirements for contracts, policies, and agreements.

Healthcare:

Efficiently search and access patient records, treatment guidelines, and research papers. Identify symptoms, treatments, and potential side effects in drug documentation.

Finance:

Search through financial reports, investment analysis, and market research for decision-making purposes. Locate specific regulations, policies, and compliance requirements for different financial products.

Human Resources:

Easily find and match relevant candidate profiles with open job positions based on skill sets and experience. Retrieve specific company policies, procedures, and employee benefits information.

Research and Academia:

Quickly locate specific research papers, articles, and publications related to a subject area. Identify grant opportunities, funding sources, and potential collaborators.

Government:

Access and search through legislation, regulations, and policy documents to assist in decision-making. Locate reports, statistics, and research papers to inform policy recommendations.

Manufacturing and Engineering:

Retrieve relevant technical specifications, standards, and design documents. Identify potential suppliers, vendors, and partners based on their product offerings and certifications.

Marketing and Sales:

Search and index customer testimonials, case studies, and product reviews. Locate relevant market research, industry trends, and competitor information.

Does it always get the answer right?

No. Not exactly...it won't give you an answer to something that's not in the documents you provided, so often making it "more" correct is a case of providing better, more and clearer data. On top of that it does slightly favour "giving an answer" over "only providing correct answers" so for now you should double check the answers with a real human. Or you can use the hints it give under "sources" to dive into the legislation documents yourself.

What would happen if I wanted to put my own documents in it?

Great things. Magical things. Likely it would be a lot better than the terrible search tools you're currently using to inspect documents.

Does it just read documents or can it connect to other data sources?

Documents and many other things.