Middle Ground, a New AI Consultation and Engagement Tool Launched

Artificial intelligence is a unique promise of our time. There is big buzz, with the topic featured in media, on podcasts and at conferences. But what does it look like to create an AI product to solve a business problem? It takes knowledge of the problem, an innovative idea, real AI development know-how, some courage and conviction and amazing business partners, to start.

When Tamara Little, owner of Coast Communications and Public Affairs, and Julian Whike, a partner at Deetken Insight, randomly met in January 2023 at a GVBOT event, they never imagined they would be business partners and co-founders of an AI company 18 months later.

Tamara, whose boutique PR firm offers consultation and engagement services, created a use case and working demo of an AI tool aimed at consultation and engagement in the fall of 2023 with her son, Josh Syer Little (then in high school, now a student at the UBC Sauder School of Business). It included a “stack” of AI tools and worked like a chatbot to accurately and safely answer the public’s questions about major projects in real time.

As they refined the idea, tested it and developed the business case, they considered what it would take to turn the concept into reality. They knew it would be challenging and they wouldn’t be able to do it alone: launching a sophisticated software tool as a small business is difficult enough, but would it be possible at all in the red-hot field of AI?

In January, Tamara and Julian reconnected to see what each other was working on and discussed Josh’s AI demo. It became clear that Deetken Insight was also bullish on AI, and had recently invested in the startup Cypress AI, with a team trained at University of California, Berkeley.

The Cypress AI platform had a lot of the same features as Tamara and Josh’s model, but was more robust, advanced and tested and appeared to be a perfect fit for Coast Comms’ consultation and engagement use case. Josh and the developers worked over the summer, further refining, testing and market-sounding.

Middle Ground was officially released in August 2024 — a user-friendly consultation and engagement tool that provides a simple way for the public to ask plain-language questions and get plain-language, accurate answers about large projects that require complex consultation and include a lot of technical and scientific information.

Middle Ground is designed for project proponents to build trust by creating more transparency about their projects, be they public projects like bridges or tunnels, or private like mines, traditional or clean energy projects. The team hopes that the tool will help project proponents engage people in the “middle” who are often left behind in consultation programs. People who want easier access to clear and transparent technical information produced by scientists and experts. People who don’t feel connected to or have access to traditional consultation processes like open houses (think youth or rural residents).

Middle Ground searches only the information we load such as approved technical and scientific studies about a project. No hallucinations or inaccurate info from whatever misinformation is out on the web. It also means Middle Ground’s results are more complete, up-to-date and accurate compared to other search methods the public might use to learn about a project, such as Google or ChatGPT.

Teams can also view the outcomes of this engagement in a custom visual dashboard that shows what type of questions or feedback is coming in. A later phase of Middle Ground will let users enter all your consultation data and get tallies and first drafts of reports using the tool. Internal teams save time and money by using it as a knowledge centre to look up their own questions about the project, saving tonnes of search and approval time.

Some key lessons:

• Networking at the GVBOT is an excellent investment that results in unexpected partnerships
• With the right use case, AI can deliver huge value
• Any company, even two boutique consulting firms, can embrace AI and bring something unique and trusted to market (with a lot of help from actual AI software engineers).
• All sizes of companies need to start embracing AI. It can’t remain only the domain of large corporations. We can all use AI in our businesses—and even release our own AI products!
• We started a bit early and didn’t have the advantage of GVBOT’s recently announced innovative AI Adoption Program, but GVBOT members should sign up and get some guidance on how to integrate AI into your business!

It’s early days but market response has been great. Watch for its deployment on major projects this winter!

Julian Whike is a partner at Deetken Insight, a strategic advisory firm headquartered in Vancouver focused on solving complex and sensitive business, economic and policy challenges using a hands-on approach, analytical techniques and an emphasis on providing customized solutions that deliver lasting value for our clients. Tamara Little is the owner of Coast Communications and Public Affairs, a full-service, boutique communications agency that focuses on high-profile reputational issues in complex stakeholder environments.