ICU explores AI chatbot to support clubs and societies

Concern and confusion surrounding the usage of the eActivities platform, where all the main transactions, claims, and logistics of your favourite society run, have been matter of discussion amongst present and past committee members for years. Worries like it being unclear where to find certain information, when a risk assessment or sponsorship contract is good enough to submit, or frustrations with response times and managing eActivities and SUMS are common amongst students. 

Sky conducted 15 interviews to club and society committee members to identify the main issues and pitfalls that needed solving, from which he identified that  “discoverability of resources is weak, even though the answer for their problems might be out there”. 

At the first activities forum of the year, hosted 15 October, Deputy President (Activities) Sky Wang presented a three-layered operating model to help CSP committee members manage administrative tasks, and help cut waiting times for support. 

The first layer, explains Sky, consists of making the information available on the Knowledge Base and the different eActivities pages more accessible through an AI chatbot. It would be trained on said Base, which would previously require knowledge audit to make sure the guidance is self-consistent and lacks redundancies. 

With nothing confirmed, the idea is still in its exploration phase as meetings with the Department of Computing have taken place to discuss its feasibility. It has also not been determined how much budget would have to be allocated to this project or what funds would be used. 

The second layer, in case students require staff help with admin, consists of providing trained student support to help with low-risk, high priority administrative groundwork. 

Currently, each request takes up to 5 working days: combined with replying times for committee-admin communications relating the issue, completing processes can take up to weeks. All 15 interviewees highlighted response times as a main concern. 

For more complex issues, Sky proposes a third layer where larger, more nuanced problems are managed by the existing Activities staff. 

The idea of incorporating an AI chatbot has received varied feedback, with some Management Chairs expressing backlash to the use of AI, and some positive responses from the CSP interviewees. A Forum attendee expressed that, while it is "a reasonable finish line goal", they have concerns regarding the overall timely feasiblity of the idea, as it relies on an operational Knowledge Base and eActivities training pages, which currently have some out of date information, 404 errors, or inaccuracies. 

Sky tells Felix he compromises to giving regular updates and taking constructive criticism into account in this project.