AI practical actions, prompting and outsourcing
Jinfo Blog

By Stephen Phillips

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"Worryingly, users' trust in AI appears to be implicit, with no questioning or critical evaluation of the results it produces."

This was a comment from a participant at our recent Community session where Jinfo clients compared notes on their AI experiences.

Whilst organisations are at slightly different stages in their journey, everyone is now using AI-enabled tools in some capacity, from drafting emails to exploring unfamiliar topics. 

All the attendees expressed caution saying that they are all still evaluating the technology and remain concerned about the risks of using the technology.

You can read a summary of the discussion, together with some practical actions, in the brand new article "How are Jinfo clients getting to grips with AI?".

Four of those actions are featured in this YouTube video.

AI Prompting

Information professionals expect systems to provide consistent, repeatable results.  

These results are underpinned by three well-established conventions:

1. Effective indexing and metadata
2. Structured search capabilities based on Boolean logic and operators
3. The researchers’ intimate knowledge of the metadata and the Boolean operators needed to construct intricate search strings to drive their searches. 

AI-driven systems offer much lower levels of consistency and searches are difficult to repeat - all of which erodes our trust in these products. 

Good “prompt engineering”, which cropped up several times in our discussion, is critical if these systems are to realise their potential.

But prompting feels much less like a science (compared to Boolean logic) and more of an art that needs to be mastered.

So, in our next Community session “The art of crafting AI prompts” (March 26th), we’ll be joined by a subject matter expert to discuss the nuances of AI prompting, and how to get the best results from AI. Register now.

AI vs. Offshoring

Our next research project is around offshoring, insourcing, outsourcing, and “AI-sourcing”.

Offshoring has often been associated with lower costs, but the labour arbitrage has been eroded and most offshore markets emphasise a combination of quality, capacity as well as cost.  

Captive offshore centres appear to be growing in popularity, whilst outsource suppliers continue to provide extensive support to several key sectors including finance and legal.

But, the emergence of AI-sourcing provides an interesting alternative to these more established options.

If you have first-hand experience of these issues please give me your input to our research by booking a short call.

Jinfo Jamboree

Finally, the Jinfo team got together recently for a fun team-building day here in London, UK:

We successfully completed an “escape room” with maximum points and eight minutes to spare! Then we celebrated birthdays for team members, followed by two rounds of crazy golf, and dinner. Great fun.

In our absence, the customer support lines were staffed by May, whose dogged persistence is always appreciated.

Thank you as always for your input to Jinfo and engagement with our work.

Don’t forget to check out:

1. Our top tips for getting to grips with AI in our article and on YouTube (and subscribe)
2. Learn the art of crafting AI prompts in our Community session

Schedule a call to give your input on offshoring, insourcing, outsourcing and the potential of AI-sourcing.

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