Fast Four: Top Companies Explain How They’re Approaching Geospatial AI

It’s one of the first lessons we learn: Before crossing the street, look left and look right.

For business leaders devising a geospatial AI strategy, that advice is particularly beneficial. Checking both directions can reveal risks like cyber vulnerabilities or investment gaps. It also highlights how peers are using AI, and the lessons they’ve learned.

In this excerpt from WhereNext’s fall 2024 webcast, thought leaders at Chick-fil-A, ConocoPhillips, and AgWest Farm Credit explain their outlook on geospatial AI. While each is taking a cautious approach, they are optimistic about the benefits of:

• Sharing location intelligence with new colleagues and business units
• Speeding up operational tasks and simplifying user experiences
• Boosting a company’s analytical edge

Executives crafting a plan for geospatial AI would do well to study this four-minute exchange before stepping off the proverbial curb.

For the full conversation, visit the webcast recording.

Chris Chiappinelli, WhereNext: These days, you cannot talk tech without talking AI, as you all know. I’m curious: When you think about expanding the use of GIS to additional colleagues—which you all seem to be doing, that’s kind of the general tack—do you see a role for AI, for things like AI-based assistants or that kind of technology? Chan, what’s your perspective at Chick-fil-A?

Chan Lee, Chick-fil-A: For me, it’s really more of a support function … it’s really more of, How do you put that into the process of what people are trying to do where they have a GIS analyst for specific things that are pretty basic, but they never get to it? Why not have an assistant supplement?

So if you have a web application, mobile application, like Field Maps or Experience Builder, can you build in the AI functionality assistant there where they can ask specific questions about the data? That, in more of a descriptive kind of way, is very helpful. Otherwise, if someone’s not familiar with that interface and where to click, because there are a lot of buttons if you have a lot of features like we have, then it can get overwhelming. . .

What we are trying to do is be extremely focused. For specific groups, we have specific applications for them. Pros and cons: The pro there is that we can make things less clicks for their workflow, but we can’t cover all use cases. In that case, what we have currently are specific filters, but those are also not the easiest thing to use. You’re not going to expect the general users to write SQL statements or understand how filtering exactly works. But if they can type or talk to an assistant that can do that for you, [it’s] incredibly powerful as far as how you get adoption into your platform as well.

So I think it’s just a net positive. Just making sure how we can contain the use cases, I think, will be important.

Chiappinelli: How about you, Roald?

Roald Aageson, AgWest Farm Credit: I think probably a real similar story. Different application, but real similar story to Chan. AgWest Farm Credit has taken a fairly conservative stance, like I think a lot of organizations have, on the outright implementation of AI. I think the hinge pin in that question for us similarly is assistant, incorporating that into existing tools, just like Chan said.

A simple use case that I think of as an appraiser is if I get a long legal description, why can’t I have an AI assistant help map that property based just from the legal description? So just one really, really simple instance where I think we could incorporate some sort of an AI assistant to help build efficiencies that I touched on earlier.

Chiappinelli: That’s obviously a prevailing theme here, is where it can support some mundane tasks, things of that nature. How about you, Danny? Any thoughts on AI at Conoco?

Danny Allen, ConocoPhillips: I agree with both Chan and Roald. I think it’s uncharted territory. We’re going to be very cautious with AI and these assistants. And obviously, these things are expected to change the way GIS is used. I feel like historically with GIS, we’ve always had that analytical edge. We’ve always had a capability to do analysis. But this integration of AI, it’s going to make it a whole lot easier for the end user to leverage the tools, to Chan’s point.

Some of the tools we have, they’re out there, but people might not know how to use them. These AI assistants are really going to make that a lot easier. I think they’re going to really help out more along the front of operational efficiencies with automating data collection, processing, asking it questions.