AI tools are easy to demonstrate and harder to operate responsibly. Before choosing a product, answer five questions about the work around it.
1. What specific task needs to improve?
“Use AI” is not a project goal. A useful starting point sounds more like: reduce the time spent classifying support requests, help staff find approved policy answers, or draft a first version of a routine document.
Write down who does the task, how often, how long it takes, and what makes the result acceptable. That gives the pilot something real to measure.
2. Is the information usable?
Find out where the source information lives, who owns it, how current it is, and whether the organization has permission to use it. Conflicting, incomplete, or poorly controlled data will produce unreliable results regardless of the model.
3. Who will review the output?
AI can produce confident errors. Decide which results require human review, what knowledge the reviewer needs, and what happens when the system is uncertain. Higher-risk decisions need stronger checks and may not be suitable for automation.
4. What could go wrong?
Consider confidential data exposure, inaccurate advice, unfair outcomes, intellectual property, supplier dependence, service availability, and the ability to explain or correct a result. Involve legal, security, privacy, and operational owners where appropriate.
5. Who will own the service after launch?
Name the owner for cost, access, quality, supplier changes, user support, and review of failures. AI services change over time, and the organization needs a way to notice when output quality or behavior changes.
How to run a useful pilot
- Choose one narrow task with enough examples to test.
- Define success and unacceptable failure before building.
- Use representative data with appropriate permissions.
- Keep a human review step.
- Record errors, workarounds, time saved, and new work created.
- Decide whether to stop, adjust, or scale based on evidence.
AI readiness is not a score. It is the ability to run a service with clear purpose, reliable information, responsible review, and accountable ownership.