Humane digital transformation
Digital solutions, human stories – Perspectives from those of us building the future.
We developed an AI application that can be used in other contexts as well
Last autumn, we found ourselves in a situation that neither of us had foreseen when we came to work in the city. Suddenly, we had found ourselves sitting in daily development meetings with specialists from one of the world's largest software companies.
We were under intense time pressure to code an application unlike anything that had been built before. We had to have the app up and running in three months so that it could be tested at the Contest for New Music (UMK) at Nokia Arena.
The result of the project is known as Tampere VIP.
On the surface, VIP is a voice-controlled app that makes recommendations for restaurants, events and things to do in Tampere. There are already several city apps around the world offering personalised recommendations. What we think makes Tampere VIP an exceptional innovation is the structure of the app.
An architecture based on AI agents opens up new possibilities
Tampere VIP is based on an AI-based architecture, where different tasks are distributed among several complementary agents. One main agent receives the user's query, parses it and forwards it to the sub-agents responsible for it.
For example, when a user asks for a place to have lunch, one of the agents retrieves restaurant data, another checks events and a third takes note of the user's location. Each agent uses only predefined and reliable data sources. The VIP application used data from Visit Tampere, which hosts the City of Tampere's events calendar and tourism website. The responses were then compiled into a single, user-friendly package.
We built the application in such a way that when agents and the data sets they use are changed, the purpose of the application changes without the need to rebuild the whole system. This allows the same technical platform to be used for very different purposes. Voice-enabled services do not need to be developed from scratch each time.
Voice control delighted
We received valuable feedback from the pilot at Nokia Arena. Although the app was still a work in progress, it was great to see how positively users reacted to it. In particular, the voice control was very interesting. For many users, it was natural to ask questions by speaking instead of searching for information in several different applications or menus.
Finally, a good use of AI!
Both Microsoft and the City of Tampere will continue developing the application independently. As we understand it, Microsoft is taking the solution forward with different partners, as the company sees strong potential for it to be used globally.
Here in Tampere, we are already planning the next use case for the agent-based architecture. We are excited to continue working on such an interesting project. For us, this has been an exceptional opportunity to learn and grow, and, of course, to demonstrate what we as a city can achieve internally for the benefit of our residents.
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