Do You Actually Need AI?
Many problems pitched as AI problems are search, rules or form problems. A few questions about what goes in and what must come out tell you which, before you spend money on the wrong fix.
Many problems pitched as AI problems do not need AI. A few questions about what goes in and what must come out tell you which ones do.
Before asking which model, ask whether you need one. The problem underneath is often a search problem, a rules problem or a badly designed form, and each of those has a cheaper, more predictable fix.
Our free assessment asks it too: a thirty-minute call, with a one-page map back inside two business days. One outcome the map allows is that nothing needs AI.
Work through the questions
Answer for your own problem. Most paths end somewhere other than a language model (the kind of AI behind ChatGPT).
Chronologiq and RecommendMe, mentioned below, are two AI products our founder, Shan Peiris, built before neesh Inc. The engineering is theirs, and the numbers are his rather than a client’s.
Is the input structured, or free-form?
Two requests that do not need AI
Picture two requests.
'We need an AI chatbot that answers staff questions about company policies.' That means months of work and a model bill that never stops.
If the policies exist and people cannot find them, the problem is findability. Good search over a well-organized FAQ fixes it, and it is a far smaller project.
'We need AI to sort incoming support tickets by priority and department.' That means collecting training data, deploying a model and watching it.
Often the customer already knows the department and how urgent it is. Two drop-downs on the intake form remove the need to classify at all.
When AI is the right answer
Why the assessment can come back negative
Almost any problem can be solved with AI. The useful question is whether AI is the best way to solve it, and often it is not.
Telling someone they do not need AI costs the project in front of you and earns the conversation after it. It is also why the assessment is free: a recommendation you can trust has to be able to say no.
Which of your problems needs AI, and which needs better search or a better form?
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