A visiting international delegation of political party members and think tank representatives recently toured Beijing's 12345 citizen service hotline center, where they saw firsthand how artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to help connect citizens with government departments through a single call.
China's 12345 is a nationwide public service hotline that links residents with government departments to seek help, report problems, or access public services.
At the Beijing service center, delegation members shared their impressions of the center's operations.
"This is the first time I actually have seen how the whole mechanism really works. And the level of transparency, the level of openness is something I was not expecting," said Filip Filipovic, an advisor at the Belt and Road Institute in Belgrade.
"The scale of the operation in total, because the scaling is very impressive," said Michal Pazic, member of the Young Social Democrats in Slovakia.
Beyond the sheer scale, what struck many delegates was the philosophy behind the service.
"The whole notion of people-centered, which is advocated within the CPC doctrine - you can see part of it here. The way how people are being assisted, the way how people are being helped by their government, it's quite impressive," said Francis Michael, principal of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) Party School in Tanzania.
For some, the experience was even more striking when they witnessed AI-powered translation and real-time data analysis.
"In my opinion and what I have experienced is that China is the most advanced country in the usage of AI. Every Chinese industry, no matter if its robotics, all the way to the city service, you can see how the AI is used. I was listening to that service call, the lady was doing it in Chinese, the person on the other side of the phone was speaking in some different languages. But I was listening to the whole translation simultaneously. It's very accurate. AI is also used in data analysis. I have heard about that in the news but to see all the data in real time running, to see all those analyses running in real time, I still have the goose bumps because I can imagine how the whole system is working to make this run. It's not a simple job to be done. I can probably imagine that there are around 5,000 people working in this building only to make the city service run. Amazing job done, really," said Filipovic.
"This model as I said earlier, it's one of its kind. It has integrated AI. AI has been put into its full use and I would say China's government has utilized technology to the full throat of it. Because what is being done, the number of people who are attended and the way how people are attended, it's impressive. The population of Beijing could be reached like half the population of my country, but all of them could be reached by the tips of the fingers by just a telephone call. It is something very impressive," said Francis Michael.
Int'l delegation visits Beijing's AI-powered citizen service hotline
