Learn how to incorporate AI responsibly

MCS Influencer Dan Belling says that AI tools might seem to return great results, but you shouldn't move forward without a robust review process.

Editor's note: The following is information sent by Dan Belling of S-5!, standing in for MCS Influencer Rob Haddock. You can read the interview or watch the video!

S-5! is moving toward adopting and using some AI tools in limited ways, overall I would evaluate our adoption as “in the testing phase.” Areas currently under consideration include:

Primary is how to use AI to help increase productivity in all areas of our business. It starts with office related tasks ranging from recapping meeting notes and creating agenda topics to cover to researching what-to and how-to report on our Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) efforts.

Meetings can be time consuming and frustrating if action items are not followed up on; here AI add-in’s can to provide concise notes and assign action items from our group gatherings, This function is a significant time saver. It isn’t perfect yet, but I would estimate that our recap notes are 90% where they need to be and only need small teaks. We find ourselves distributing meeting notes and assigning next steps to stakeholders same-day, resulting in hot topic moving to outcomes much quicker.

Another real-life example is in our recent effort to document and enhance our Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) efforts. We were able to leverage AI to identify and create a formal structure for reporting. We asked AI to create an outline, which after some customization, resulted in a very detailed table of contents of the areas to document and report on.

The challenges with AI that are most concerning to S-5! is the ease with which competitors might access and then take advantage of our intellectual property. We occasionally run a test, asking ChatGPT to write such things as technical articles on Metal Roof attachments. The results that are returned are eerily similar to content generated by S-5! over these last 30 years. Actors and artist, Scarlett Johansson as an example are rightfully concerned that this new powerful tool can be used to mimic them without any benefit to the creator. It is no different for companies that are leaders in advancing new products, AI can allow competitors to quickly mimic them, so as a company we need to be assertive in protecting trademark and Intellectual property.

One area we do not allow our team is the use of AI is in the creation of marketing or research materials. For the same reasons mentioned above we are committed to “In house” creativity. New product developments as an example starts by listening to the voice of the customer and then leveraging our testing capabilities to design and develop new products and assign our in-house team to develop the marketing materials to support that use case.

My advice – Test Ai, then re-test Ai. Be aware that while you might see AI tools return great results don’t move forward using that output without a robust review process.

P.S. None of this note was AI generated😉

Dan Belling is the senior director of strategy and market development at S-5!