AI isn’t just a buzzword, it’s part of our everyday lives. It’s the message that reminds you of your next meeting, the algorithm that recommends your next Netflix binge, and the chatbot that answers your banking questions in the middle of the night. Despite its prevalence, there remains (rightly) a great deal of scepticism about its use.
Will relying on AI erode our own capabilities? Can it be trusted to accurately communicate complex and nuanced information? Can it truly complement or enhance face-to-face interaction?
At SenateSHJ, we’re energised by questions like these. They push us to explore what’s possible and help our clients navigate a fast-changing world – always with a human touch.
Here are just a few ways we’re using AI to enhance what we do.
AI reduces time to insights
We can incorporate AI at each point in the engagement process to uncover meaningful insights more efficiently. This includes using large language models (LLMs) to help craft questions and communication, leveraging AI to collate and structure data, using AI to digitise information collected in person during workshops and engagement sessions; theming and analysing large datasets, and visualising insights in dashboards and report.
AI insights lead to more targeted face-to-face engagement
In the pre-engagement planning phase, we can use synthetic audiences to test and focus our engagement approach, ensuring our clients invest resources in engaging with the right cohorts on the right questions. Synthetic audiences are emerging as a front-runner in complimentary engagement techniques. This is where we use AI to custom build personas representative of audience segments of interest to you. Then, just as we would in face-to-face focus groups, we ask each persona questions and elicit the answers and insights you need.
The quality of insights depends on the richness of data used to create the synthetic audience. By using a secure ‘walled garden’ environment we can feed the model a wide variety of data from internal and external sources to teach the model about an audience’s demographics, interests, values, concerns and past responses to similar issues. We can also feed the model prior community or stakeholder consultation reports.
These synthetic audiences are quicker to set up and more cost effective to run, getting you from engagement to insights faster. Plus, we can keep the synthetic focus group running for as long as you need.
AI-assisted engagement is a growing field
As leaders in this space, examples of AI-assisted engagement are crossing our desks all the time. There’s the Scottish government which used AI to seek out and theme public perspectives on an issue, claiming it saved the British taxpayer £20m a year and about 75,000 hours of time freeing up government official to focus on other work (source). And there’s the council that used AI for live translation in a community meeting; the mayor spoke in English and the attendees could read captions in language or listen to translated audio (source).
There’s so much potential to elevate our engagement practice through the sensible use of AI, and we’re here to help our clients navigate this new era.
