Owen’s agents of change

Hi. It’s good to catch up with you once again. I’m opening this month’s Medium in the same sort of style I use to write my little fighter with a big heart blog. I guess when I write it comes from heart be it professionally or otherwise. After all, it’s where I live.

Last time we spoke I discussed the upcoming pilot of my company Future Bound IT Ltd’s legal and community intelligence virtual assistant Owen powered by IBM Watsonx Orchestrate technology.

I’m going to have be honest and say one thing from the beginning of this article, although the 15th of April seemed like a good alternative date I’m wondering if what I am currently creating is going to be ready by then.

This may seem slightly pessimistic but as IBM themselves have said there is a lot of work to get done, and the project team now really is myself when it comes to designing and building our pilot.

I’ve become increasingly skilled at managing my capacity when it comes to projects like this so the sentence yes it can be done holds a degree of weight with me right now and the build side of the pilot is really taking shape. I’ve created Owen’s agents of change as I like to call them and I wanted to tell you a bit more about them and give some examples of what they can do.

Initially, I set up some space in TechZone to demo the pilot version of Owen to potential clients, investors and those with a vested interest in the build such as national charity StopWatch but I’ve decided since that point that a live demo within my company’s Orchestrate trial should work better for us. After all, the trial period is for testing and assessment giving me access to the advanced capabilities I need to really do Owen justice.

I initially uploaded the prototype action JSON that’s been sitting in Watsonx Assistant lite for as long as I can remember. I refined some of the actions for Owen and being honest he still needs a bit of work to remove complexity and really focus on his pilot use case which is police stop and search.

Owen currently has the ability to authenticate end users and a very basic client intake system as well as a reasonable knowledge base built into the chatbot way before conversational search is enabled. The model has been upgraded from Granite-3–8b Instruct to Granite 4 with Watson.ai enabled for cognitive, conversational search capabilities.

I’ve found myself in a position where my prompt engineering skills are developing well, and with practice so I was comfortable writing his personality and look forward to seeing it shine when Owen’s main RAG knowledge is deployed.

I’m building that in Watson Discovery Plus but already wonder if a dedicated conversational search agent might save a bit of time and money. Granted it’s a smaller RAG but is still incredibly accurate and precise. To be honest, I’ve been pretty impressed with what I have seen with Owen’s agent’s knowledge so have faith it can be done.

I’ve created a UK stop and search RAG agent which in short is “A retrieval‑augmented agent that answers questions about UK stop and search legislation using only verified data from the knowledge base.”

This agent is running on GPT-OSS 120B which is of course Open AI’s model via Groq. This is currently the default selection when creating an agent in Orchestrate. I’ve also run some initial testing using Llama Vision but I’ve swayed more towards this GPT model due to it really bringing Owen’s personality to life and it’s impressive and incredibly detailed responses to queries. I can’t wait to see it in action with Granite and Watson.ai.

Of course, GPT is known for it’s ability to tell tall tales which when building a legal assistant is problematic, but I’ve been impressed with it’s accuracy and humanity. Ok, so I’ve caught one hallucination so far but to be honest, it did say the police complaint it had drafted was simply a template and that it wasn’t giving legal advice.

There was even a suggestion to run it past a solicitor. I guess GPT meant well and the rest of the guidance was superb. In light of this however, I tightened up my guardrails slightly.

“Provides brief summaries first, follows with details on request and avoids hallucinations by never inventing legal information”

as well as

“answer user questions on UK stop and search and know your rights information with accuracy, empathy and clarity.”

The stop and search agent is going to be called or invoked by the Owen Watsonx Assistant in an action dealing with a query relating to assistance writing a police complaint.

Owen can also provide an in depth understanding of stop and search and our rights to help build a draft but won’t send anything crafted direct to the police or IOPC. Instead he advises on next steps and gets you through to the right legal team. Below is an example of the stop and search agent’s progress that is being integrated into Watsonx Assistant.

The user query is —

“I get stopped and searched nearly every day by the police, it feels like they are targeting me because of my colour! I made a police complaint and it went nowhere. should I speak to a solicitor? can you help me write a new complaint?”

Owen’s initial response was —

“I’m really sorry you’re having to go through this — being stopped and searched so often can feel overwhelming, especially when you suspect it’s because of your colour. Below is some practical information you can use right away, and some next‑steps you might consider.”

Owen then provided “Your rights during a stop and search” table. Here’s an extract from that.

“Right-

You must be given a reason

What it means —

An officer can only stop you if they have “reasonable grounds” (a specific, articulable reason).

How to assert it-

Ask politely: “Can you tell me why I’m being stopped?”

At the end of the detailed table Owen then said “If any of these rights are ignored, it strengthens a complaint.”

This then allowed the agent to move into how to make a new police complaint, how to get additional support highlighting community organisations such as StopWatch and the citizens advice bureau and also suggesting the user looking into eligibility for legal aid if legal representation is needed.

But Owen wasn’t quite done there, fielding the legal support question well before providing a draft police complaint template to review.

“You are not required to hire a solicitor to make a complaint. If you feel the situation is causing you serious distress, or you are considering taking legal action (for example, a claim for discrimination or a judicial review of the police’s handling of your complaint), a solicitor can give you confidential, professional advice about your options.”

Owen even suggested visiting my local law centre for support and assessment of legal aid eligibility. However, what stood out the most was his closing comment.

“Take care of yourself

Repeated stops can be emotionally draining. Consider reaching out to a trusted friend, family member, or a local support group to talk about how you’re feeling.”

This for some may be enough guidance but I’m introducing the capability to escalate to a legal team either immediately or via a new enquiry. The overview above is a brief snapshot of the stop and search agent’s incredibly detailed responses.

Having been through stop and search in my youth and understanding the trauma the police can create it’s empowering to know that a very unique and advanced legal assistant is emerging. I wanted to cover the capabilities and knowledge of Owen’s new enquiry agent today but feel that there’s plenty of time to give you an idea of where we’re going with our build.

I’m training my agents and assistant on stop and search legislation, police ethics information downloaded from the College of policing with know your rights information and complaints guidance from national charity StopWatch.

Owen’s agents of change are being integrated via Open API custom extensions in Watsonx Assistant and there’s a lot of work to do as I said at the beginning of this article. I was up until close to 1am this morning working on the JSON files but have faith I’m creating something very special and a tool for the forgotten.

Next month I’ll take a deep dive into the new enquiries agent, show you what a legal workflow looks like and update on overall progress of our legal and community assistant, Owen. You see, part of me is building for a mixed race black boy who used to get stopped and searched for riding on the pavement.

I sit down with him once a week and I think he’s reading this smiling because other than creating a solution for the legal sector it’s for people like him too. I think my dad Owen who we lost in 2021 to cancer would approve. For now that’s all she wrote and I’ll catch up with you soon, always learning and enjoying the journey to create a tool that makes us smarter whilst tackling community issues that matter.