Improving Consultation and Engagement Through AI
Coast Communications and Public Affairs has partnered with strategy advisory firm
Deetken Insight and artificial intelligence developers Cypress AI to launch Middle Ground, a safe and user-friendly AI consultation and engagement tool that provides a simple way for the public to get clear, accurate answers about infrastructure projects. By doing this, we hope to help build trust in infrastructure projects and get more community members involved in the consultation and engagement process.
Middle Ground aims to support proponents of major projects (such as mines, bridges, tunnels, energy and clean energy projects, etc.) that need to convey complex, technical data about the potential impacts and benefits of a given project and consult the public, stakeholders, First Nations and community members on those projects.
Plain Language Questions, Plain Language Answers
Middle Ground functions a lot like ChatGPT and other AI chatbots we’re familiar with—but it is safer, more precise and more accurate. It allows the public to ask plain-language questions about a project and get plain-language answers based on the technical and scientific data often generated by experts as part of the project approval process.
In other words, Middle Ground creates a brand-new way of expanding engagement
efforts by providing an easy-to-use chatbot made just for this purpose that’s available 24/7 to anyone interested in a project. It gives people in the middle—those who aren’t particularly opposed to or in favour of a project but want to learn more about thedetailed and technical information—a chance to be more involved in the consultation process and be heard. This will ultimately result in better input and greater trust in the process and the project.
The Origin Story
As a team that delivers consultation and engagement services, we immediately realized that AI could play a crucial role in consulting the public during project approval processes. Tamara conceived the idea with her son, Josh Syer, a university student with a passion for AI.
After Josh created a demonstration project, together they began investigating how this concept could be brought to market. They soon discovered that Vancouver-based strategy advisory firm Deetken Insight with Cypress AI had developed a similar but further developed AI tool that could serve as the foundation of Middle Ground.
Thankfully, the teams at Deetken Insight and Cypress AI shared the excitement and
agreed to partner with Coast Comms and customize their Cypress AI tool to
revolutionize public consultation and engagement!
How It Works
While the public user experience offered by Middle Ground is similar to that of a tool like ChatGPT, Middle Ground operates differently by ensuring the answers are 100 per cent correct and providing real-time citations that the user can easily open and review.
Middle Ground only provides answers based on scientific and technical documents that the project provides, such as the environmental assessment documentation that’s typically uploaded to the B.C. Environmental Assessment Offices’ EPIC site. It doesn’t pull information from random websites or make up it up —all answers are cited and linked to original studies and documents so that users can examine the trusted content for themselves. Middle Ground is safe, and the system is secure, created by computer engineers with expertise in AI who follow data management and privacy best practices.
Making Consultation More Efficient
While expanding consultation efforts and making technical data more accessible and transparent are our primary goals, Middle Ground also provides substantial productivity benefits. Organizations can save time and money by using Middle Ground to quickly look up answers to public, stakeholder, media or regulator questions. Middle Ground is exciting because it’s not just a vague use of AI, but a specific use case that will improve the consultation and engagement process for both public users and internal teams.
We’re very excited about this launch and would again like to thank our partners,
Deetken Insight and Cypress AI, for helping us bring this revolutionary consultation and engagement tool to the market.
Click here to visit the Middle Ground website and book a demo!
