The Diaspora Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in an effort to significantly enhance engagement with the diaspora globally, unveiled ‘Jessie’ yesterday. ‘Jessie is a state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence agent that seeks to redefine how Guyanese interact with the Diaspora Unit. The AI agent was engineered by the Chief Executive Officer of V75 Inc, Eldon Marks and has the ability to speak 16 languages and understand Guyanese creole.
The monumental step taken by the Diaspora Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs aims to not only improve the efficiency of unit but also to make government service more accessible to Guyanese globally.
Rosalinda Rasul, Head of the Diaspora Unit at the launch yesterday posited that the unit has been inundated with queries from the diaspora and the introduction of ‘Jessie’ will allow staff to focus on “more substantive duties and responsibilities”
According to Marks, ‘Jessie’ is not a chatbot and is in fact light years ahead of chatbots. The AI agent is powered by generative AI technology within an AI product package engineered here in Guyana by Guyanese for Guyanese and represents cutting edge AI technology applied to revolutionize information access and productivity at the Ministry.”
In a world where the impact and usefulness of artificial intelligence is now undeniable due to advancements being made daily by companies in the developed world, the technology behind ‘Jessie’ is impressive. This is because ‘Jessie’ is powered by Trueselph. Trueselph is a platform engineered here in Guyana by Marks and his team which has the capacity to “ ingest documents and make content intelligently accessible to AI models. This allows AI models like ‘Jessie’ to interpret the intent of the query by finding the useful content it ingested before finally formulating a “tailored reply”
Moreover, as Artificial Intelligence and AI models like ‘Jessie’ increasingly become part of how we access services locally, the issue of data privacy has to be addressed. Marks contends that data privacy and accuracy of information were addressed in the engineering of the AI agent. He assured that ‘Jessie’ is engineered with declarative services which anonymize data. Further, the WhatsApp medium facilitates end to end encrypted conversations. We also use commercial AI models which preserve privacy and do not utilise any data passed to the model for training.”
In relation to accuracy of information, if ‘Jessie’ encounters any unfamiliar query, it will advise the user to seek information from alternative sources.
In response to questions by The Guyana Economist on whether the AI agent has the ability to streamline the process for those persons interested in trade or investing in Guyana, Marks stated that the ‘Jessie’ is being rolled out in phases and in phase 1, it will only provide “ general information on investment topics which it has ingested from content provided by the Ministry” However in subsequent phases Jessie “will possess the ability to interview potential investors in order to provide a more tailored response.”
Overall, ‘Jessie’ has the “potential to be a single source of truth for very accessible information in a sea of outdated websites and conflicting interpretations of content shared in passing by others”
V75 Inc, through its innovativeness and creation of AI models and agents continues to be beacon of hope in Guyana’s technology sector
‘Jessie’ will be available for use by the public next week.
