This season has been kindly sponsored by the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau. Visit discoverPHL.com to start planning your next life sciences meeting.
In this episode of the Convene Podcast, Rory G. Archibald from VisitScotland explores the ethical considerations, data security challenges, and job evolution AI brings to the industry. Tune in to learn how event professionals can navigate AI responsibly and effectively.
Follow Convene:
Contact Information: For any questions, reach out to Magdalina Atanassova, matanassova(at)pcma(dot)org.
Sponsorships and Partnerships: Reach 36,000 qualified meeting organizers with Convene, the multi-award-winning magazine for the business events industry. Contact our sales team: https://www.pcma.org/advertise-sponsorship/
Music: Inspirational Cinematic Piano with Orchestra
Creators & Guests
Guest
Rory G. Archibald
Rory loves to challenge the status quo. He started his career in events over 15 years ago and has become passionate about the potential for this industry to change the world. Bridging the gap between delegates at conferences and societal change has become his mission in life. During his time with VisitScotland, looking after the associations, sectors, marketing, PR and policy strategy for business events, Rory has introduced campaigns that have transformed the perception of business events in his home country. ‘Legends,’ focused on the strengths of events to elevate innovation and discovery; while most recently, ‘Journey to Change’ showcases the responsibility events have in creating positive social transformation. Rory believes the industry has a duty and an opportunity to start tackling global challenges and making them main stage discussions that turn into solutions.
What is PCMA Convene Podcast?
Since 1986, Convene has been delivering award-winning content that helps event professionals plan and execute innovative and successful events. Join the Convene editors as we dive into the latest topics of interest to — and some flying under the radar of — the business events community.
Convene Podcast Transcript
Convene Series: AI in the Public Sector: Balancing Innovation, Ethics & Data Security in Business Events
*Note: the transcript is AI generated, excuse typos and inaccuracies
Rory G. Archibald: We may be employing artificial intelligence technologists in the next five years, a role that has never existed in public sector or business events industry.
Magdalina Atanassova: Welcome to Season six of the Convene Podcast brought to you by Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau. AI is reshaping the business events industry—but what does that mean for public sector organizations? In this episode, we welcome Rory G. Archibald. With over 15 years of industry experience, Rory is passionate about the power of events to drive innovation and societal change. At VisitScotland, looking after the associations, marketing, PR and policy strategy, Rory has introduced campaigns that have transformed the perception of business events in his home country.
Today, he joins us to discuss AI’s ethical challenges, the need for data transparency, and how job roles will evolve in a tech-driven future. Can event planners navigate AI responsibly while still driving innovation?
We start now.
Hi Rory and welcome to the Convene podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here.
Rory G. Archibald: Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Magdalina Atanassova: Absolutely.
So you work for VisitScotland and organizations like VisitScotland that are government owned entities often face stricter restrictions and regulations when implementing AI. So from your experience, what are the biggest ethical considerations event planners must navigate in the public sector?
Rory G. Archibald: I'll start out to caveat that I need to say I'm not an expert in this. So my opinions, my answers are all based on my experiences. And although I've been with VisitScotland for almost 10 years, I was in the private sector beforehand and I still feel like I'm getting to grips with how public sector operates.
I think that is the wonderfulness of public sector.
The biggest consideration is data, data, data, data. Now, in Europe, there are strict laws of GDPR on how we use personal data and that has to be taken into account even if those laws don't exist.
Because that is all about transparency, it's about consent, it's about security and how you deal with people's data. So from public sector point of view, personal data is completely out when using AI software for any.
So we have to be incredibly careful about what we use this for. Anything that is commercially sensitive, we have to be very careful. Now, there are some closed AI platforms, but the majority of them are open to everyone and anyone and they use whatever you put in there as a learning opportunity and that commercialization.
If you have a fantastic idea that you're looking to refine and you just throw up the entire idea into an AI platform, there's potential that that's going to come up and a solution for somebody else on the other side of the world at some point in the near future.
And there is a story about technology firm which did that. Exactly that. Trying to find the solution to a problem with an algorithm. And then a major competitor in the other side of the world picked up all the data they'd been working on, found a solution and actually was able to come to market with a software solution before the major competitor.
Now, if that's true or not, I don't know, but it's enough to make you think, secondly, before you upload what you're uploading, this business events industry is so competitive that we need to be very careful.
We love to share knowledge, we absolutely do. But we're all businesses and we're all competitors in a friendly sense. And it's just making sure that we treat our businesses like we would treat people's private data and questioning everything that we throw up there.
Those ethical considerations, it's looking at what comes back because a lot of artificial intelligence, we don't know what the motivation behind it of the owners of those platforms. And there could be political motivations,
those platforms could have learned from different people's inputs that actually are subjugating marginalized communities that are looking to create unequal experiences. And so this system has learned and then churning out that same information as a suggestion to perhaps one of your problems.
And it's trying to make sure that we're not reinforcing an equitable assumptions that that system could have learned. So it's making sure that when we are considering using AI that everything is checked, everything is sense checked.
And we're so incredibly considerate about what we're uploading.
Magdalina Atanassova: I really like this anecdote of the solution because it really makes you think, wow, okay.
And I'm thinking in your case with destinations, that's, you know, destinations sometimes have these very small unique selling points and you definitely don't want to give it up to your competitor.
Rory G. Archibald: Absolutely not. You don't want to spend however many thousands on a new ad campaign. And then all of a sudden somebody on the other side of the world has amended it to their own destination and get it out there quicker and faster than you.
So there's, you know, it applies to everybody. No matter how big you are, how small you are, if you're a destination, if you're public sector, private sector, a planner, any part of the supply chain,
we have to protect our own intellectual capital as well as share when we're at PCMA events, be it EMEA, Convening Leaders, edUcon, but there's always something we keep to ourselves because you don't share everything.
Magdalina Atanassova: That's true.
And you mentioned data and bias. And that's something that is really on the minds, I feel, of the events industry, event planners in general.
So how should the government owned organizations audit and mitigate AI bias to ensure fair and ethical decision making?
Rory G. Archibald: There's one I don't have the crystal ball answer for,
and it's a difficult one because how do we audit AI? How does anybody audit AI? Is anybody actually auditing AI? And at the moment it feels, and you know, if you're listening to this and you want to put a comment into this and tell me that I'm absolutely wrong,
feel free to do so. But it feels that there is no audit of AI and that AI is just growing exponentially because of the input data that it's gathering. What it's learning from news articles that are online,
you know this, there's a big thing about who's missing from the data that we're using to train these systems. And if you think these systems are being used primarily from the west and the east, and there's a huge part of the world that doesn't have access to artificial intelligence,
doesn't have access to the Internet. There's countries out there with huge restrictions on what they can access, and there's countries out there that their populations just don't have access to electricity, never mind artificial intelligence.
Therefore, the information we're getting is always going to be incredibly biased and it's going to be biased towards the richer nations.
So it's going back to that sense checking that we have to make sure that we do our own auditing. And it's that auditing within the values of our own organization, the legislation of our own organizations, the values of the companies that we work for.
And if we are struggling, we should always get a sense checked. There's always somebody else in the organization who might be a diversity, equity and inclusion specialist who might want to check some content that AI has helped you to deliver.
If there's training going on with AI, it's not just looking at the technology experts to look at AI, it's also bringing in human rights experts, diversity, equity and inclusion experts to deliver that training alongside, I believe the word is a technologist.
There we go. And it's kind of looking at that holistic approach where you don't just take the training from the person who designed it, you have to take the training from various different parts of society and to ensure that until it is is regulated within the laws of your country or the values of your organization,
that you have to be your own sense.
Magdalina Atanassova: Checker And I think that's even beyond AI. Right, it goes beyond AI just in our organizations. We need to expand our thinking and make sure we're not biased. Of course we have those invisible biases, but that's why we work in teams, so that people can shine a light on our best things we don't realize we have.
Rory G. Archibald: Oh, absolutely. That's where diverse teams are the absolute critical point of the success of any organization.
Scientific fact says it leads to greater innovation, greater efficiencies, greater productivity. Diverse teams are the absolute core of any organization. So if we're all the same, all living the same street, all have the same education, we're all going to come up with the same ideas time and time again.
And all of a sudden your company is no longer making money and you're looking for another job.
Magdalina Atanassova: True.
Speaking of innovation, especially in companies like yours that are government owned, how can you balance all the regulations and restrictions you have in terms of using AI that strive for innovation that currently we're all speaking about that AI can help with?
Rory G. Archibald: I think it's a reality check of what we use AI for. So when we do have legislation in place from a public sector organization and what you can and cannot do, you just have to accept that.
For example, any contract that we produce for partnering with a partner for subvention, when we had subvention, even employment contracts, none of that can go into AI whatsoever.
Because even as again, it's going back to data, we're sharing data of potentially a partner organization that is maybe not in the public domain or even it is in the public domain.
It is not my organization's duty or responsibility to upload that kind of data. So we just have to accept that that is not what we use it.
I've been using it in the past is to see and push the boundaries of my own creativity within your organization maybe for nine and a bit years. You don't want to get stagnant in how you think and how you want to do projects.
And I find artificial intelligence gives you a different angle or makes you think a different way on particular subject matters or projects which actually help tremendously. And I put in a scenario into AI recently about a 2000 people conference with international delegates coming from the Middle East, Asia, Europe and North America.
They're staying for five days. How do we make this the most sustainable conference ever? I was delighted when it came up. Don't hold the conference because they do say that the most sustainable conference is the one that doesn't take place.
But it was Giving recommendations on. It didn't mention any brand names, but it was looking at hotels that have this accreditation, this accreditation, this accreditation because those are the ones that are used within Scotland and the United Kingdom.
It was looking at airlines that had direct routes into so it said you could fly From New York, D.C. Abu Dhabi, Doha, these places and look out for the airlines with these accreditations, airlines with fleets under a certain age which are the most fuel efficient airlines.
It was giving directions and links to different walking tours within one of the cities in Scotland that I put in as a suggestion. I then went into details some things we know about single use plastic getting your food and drink from local suppliers.
But it did go into look at locally owned suppliers, look at marginal community owned restaurants, bars, shops and things. So it gave me a full itinerary of what that could look like.
And by no means was it absolutely perfect, but actually made. I thought it would make my life as a planner so much easier because I know exactly what accreditations to look out for in a new country potentially.
I know now what to look out for when I'm choosing my next airline to go to say edUcon in June because I'm going to now look to see is the airline I normally fly with, how young are their aircraft, how much of their profits are invested in biofuels, how much of their profits are invested on climate change initiatives,
carbon offsetting. So gave some really good examples of how to do something as sustainably as possible. And I'm sure there were many more to add to that list that didn't mention but it just made a lot of things easier.
So now I know I'm going to tell people look out for these different accreditations when you're looking at hotels for your room block because that that means they are the most sustainable accredited hotels in Scotland.
And just little things like that about pushing your thought process and gaining a little bit of new knowledge. Even though I represent the country, you can always learn and it's that creativity making you think a little bit differently or think about new things is where I found AI to be incredibly useful.
Magdalina Atanassova: I really love these examples and the fact that you use it to, to add to your knowledge because it seems that many times I wouldn't say planners, just people in general would like to input something into AI and just AI to give them all the knowledge.
But we have to remember that we can use AI to challenge our own thinking and ask us questions and make us find our answers to questions.
Rory G. Archibald: I feel like I'm plugging PCMA events Although there's a PCMA podcast, so that's probably convenient. A PCMA event and convening leaders in San Diego in 2024, there was an AI session and one of my friends, Matt Murnain, who works for Slate Event Management, was on the panel and they used that session and did live examples with AI.
And I learned something at that session that you can prompt AI to ask you questions to further analyze your request. So he was putting in saying, I want to find venues in New York City that this capacity,
this venue help me, but it's also put in there, ask me questions if that will help to refine. So that AI was coming back with a full list of questions several times and then came back with the final solution was exactly what Matt was looking for.
But it probably wouldn't have got there if there was no prompt for questions. And so now everything I put forward is ask me questions. If you think this request could be better or refined better, or perhaps maybe what I've put in could be better, ask me questions to help.
And that's a, that's a game changer for me.
Magdalina Atanassova: I cannot agree more. I do the same and I love it. And even though sometimes I'm really annoyed, but that's a different.
So I'm curious about what steps has Visit Scotland implemented to ensure AI transparency and if that's something that other event planners can learn from, from the approach.
Rory G. Archibald: We have a very black and white version of what this looks like on a training document, what you can, cannot use it for. And it is very much geared towards commercially sensitive information contracts and personal data.
So that is what we have implemented. I think like any organization in the world, we are still on a learning journey and that kind of information is going to grow and grow and grow.
And now if Visit Scotland are listening to this, please, please don't sack me after saying this, but I don't think there's anybody in an organization who is an absolute expert in artificial intelligence.
And I don't think that exists in many organizations across the world. Everybody I talk to, other DMOs event organizations are not experts in artificial intelligence. It's not our industry, it's not our bag.
We need to look to the experts to help guide us on this.
So as a public sector organization, we are transparent about as much as we possibly can be as part of our remit, we have to be transparent. So any guidance that we have, there's freedom of information requests that can go out to say, what is your policies on artificial intelligence?
And it will be exactly what will come a very frank document that says this is what it's not used for, this is what it is used for. And we get those reminders, those training quite regularly as part of our mandatory training within the organization.
So those systems are in place, but those systems will evolve the more that we know about it, the more we understand and the more we become comfortable with its use.
So I don't think I was fully answering that question there, but it's probably as far as I can go with my, with my knowledge.
Magdalina Atanassova: I think that's totally fair. And do you have as an employee of Visit Scotland, when you go to events or, you know, interact in the industry with other suppliers or third party, do you have to inquire how they.
Rory G. Archibald: Use AI when we go to other events?
That's a good question. And actually no, we haven't had. That's not something I'm aware of that we have to do. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens in the near future.
There's artificial intelligence apps that are note taking and then we'll summarize meetings. And I do have a slight concern with that because some of our meetings we have Chatham House rules where somebody will be chatting about something that may be commercially sensitive, but they need to ask a question within a small group of people.
Now on teams on Zoom, you get a notification when your session's been recorded, but that doesn't mean to say that somebody could be there with their phone or on another computer with an app.
That is note taking. And that's something that concerns me about when we go to board meetings, when we do small meetings, when we do online meetings, what has been recorded that I would then be quoted on as saying?
And it's not so much scared about what I'd be quoted on, it's more of that kind of just intrusion on trust. It's an intrusion on trust. And I think that's maybe something that our industry will need to look at going forward because there's many sessions that we do where we do put Chatham House rules on because it allows people to be open and honest about challenges and problems that organization might be facing with the intent that the
group will be able to come together to help find a solution to those challenges and those problems. But that will quickly go away once if people are recording note taking apps on their phone for those sessions.
So I think that's something really to consider and I would love to see what PCMA's response to that exact same question might be.
Let's get Sheriff on the next podcast.
Magdalina Atanassova: Nice way to throw it back at us.
But yeah, definitely, I think you raised a very valid point that they see it will be a concern if it's not now.
Magdalina Atanassova: After a word from our sponsor.
Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau Ad: Philadelphia is a city of innovation. From 1776 to today, Philly leads in life sciences with world-renowned research and cutting-edge facilities. Host your next convention in a city where breakthroughs happen. A world of discovery is waiting. Visit discoverPHL.com to start planning your next life sciences meeting.
Magdalina Atanassova: Now back to the program.
So definitely it will become something that we should be more mindful of.
And will there be a technological or other solution?
Remains to be seen, who knows?
Rory G. Archibald: Because we don't want to be going down the route where a lot of lockers are outside rooms for people to put their phones in. But yeah, we need to see what happens.
But yeah, because, you know, trust is fundamental in our industry. When we go into these meetings, when we share issues, problems, challenges,
the trust element, that it doesn't go beyond those four walls is incredibly important. It's the same with any industry. It's not just ours. Every organization will have these areas where you have private meetings or private sessions.
I was just at an industry conference a few weeks ago and one of the sessions was Chatham House Rules, because we were talking about diversity, equity, inclusion, we were talking about current world politics, what the implications are on that.
And that was having conversations about how does public sector react to diversity, equity, inclusion. Challenges within the business events landscape when dealing with international clients whose DEI policies may now be completely out the window.
And how do we then challenge that when we want to ensure that they remain DEI focused when they're in our destinations? And those are conversations that you don't want going beyond those walls, but you want to use the power of the people in those walls to try and come up with solutions or the next step.
And that would be eroded if that trust is then betrayed.
Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah. And these are very difficult questions, especially in today's political climate.
Rory G. Archibald: Oh, yes.
Magdalina Atanassova: So as AI becomes more integrated into government and event planning process, how will job roles and required skills evolve? And what does this mean for the business events industry? You think?
Rory G. Archibald: Oh, this is a good question.
So I had a conference a few weeks ago and Leslie Williams, who is a consultant for Gaining Edge, was on a panel. Actually it was a podcast panel, so they weren't recording live, but they were treating like a podcast.
And if anyone's out there listening, actually doing a live podcast at a conference session is a really cool way to do a conference session because you get so many different opinions in a short space of time and it's just a lovely conversation.
So it's a really good idea.
But she was saying that she doesn't believe that. So the big phrase that we all use is that AI is not going to take your job, but somebody who knows how to do AI will.
And she pushed back on that a little bit by saying she doesn't actually believe that because she thinks a lot of administrative tasks could become obsolete in the future because of artificial intelligence.
Which then means is there a potential that there could be job losses within all industries, not just business events, particularly when it comes to administrative tasks Now? I'm not sure.
I don't know. I'm kind of on the fence with this. I can actually maybe see where three people were doing administrative tasks. Maybe one person is doing administrative tasks where three people are doing content writing for a DMO.
Maybe one person's doing content writing for a DMO because all of a sudden you can get the bulk of the work done for five different projects all at the same time by artificial intelligence.
And then you use the rest of your time to sense, check, copyright, check, do all those that good stuff, make sure it makes sense.
So I think she brought up a really good point. And you know, this industry is all about different opinions, discussing, debating.
I've always been right behind that AI is not going to take your job, but somebody who knows how to do AI will. And now I'm kind of like there's actually maybe a little bit more of a nuance there.
There's maybe a little bit of a deeper dive into that because there's a real possibility. And even looking at these big event organizations who employ thousands of event strategists across the world now those event strategists are all at different levels.
And there's people that maybe look after rooming blocks and floor plans and table plans for banquets.
Could that be enveloped by artificial intelligence in the next five to 10 years? And all of a sudden those roles, say, maybe there's 100 of those roles in a huge organization like Matt's.
Well, that then goes down to 20 of those roles, because artificial intelligence is able to take on the bulk of the administrative tasks of that kind of thing. Now, that might not happen, but I'm now open to the idea and to discuss how you combat that, because I think actually that's a real possibility.
And actually bringing jobs together and making teams smaller is taking away jobs. So I think it's something to be really concerned about over the future. Now, I know we might talk about upskilling later on.
I think that's where you maybe combat that element of it. But it's going to be interesting. It's going to be really interesting to see how, particularly from a DMO position, sorry, destination management organization, just.
I didn't clarify that at the start how AI will be Embraced and how that will change the job landscape.
When I first started to visit Scotland, I had absolutely no idea that as an organization we employ lawyers, we employ data analysts, we have a huge IT team. When we look at marketing, there's so many different roles that people do different things and it's incredibly complex.
And it's going to be interesting to see how that complexity evolves over the next 10 years.
If artificial intelligence is embraced by public sector and how that would evolve, what people do. Will new roles be created because there's been an entirely new facet of destination management discovered because of artificial intelligence.
Naturally there is job creation there, potentially. So I don't have the answer to how that's going to look,
but I think there's an element of excitement on how that's going to transform our industry and transform the potential drop roles. We may be employing artificial intelligence technologists in the next five years, a role that has never existed in public sector or the business events industry with the exception of maybe spark,
ever, ever. So I think there's excitement there to be seen, but an acknowledgement that maybe we're not looking quite so much that it's not going to affect anybody's job. I think there is going to be changes.
Magdalina Atanassova: And do you foresee AI agents being employed in DMOs?
Rory G. Archibald: That's a good question. You know what? I genuinely think that might happen over the next five to 10 years because if we look at PCMA has built their own artificial intelligence function which is closed, which is used for the business events industry,
specialized for the business events industry,
will there be an AI created that is specialized for the destination marketing organization? Would Visit Scotland look to create its own artificial intelligence platform which is managed in house, run by us, who then is used by our partners throughout Scotland as a standalone, closed, safe platform for data, for compliance,
for contracts?
Is that possibility in the future? I feel like I've maybe just given away some of our competitive potential because who knows, Visit Scotland might be thinking about that. But could that be the future where DMOS create their own artificial intelligence platforms which are fine tuned for their own needs and therefore have to be looked after by an artificial intelligence specialist that might sit in either the marketing directorate or the IT directorate,
who knows? But that's huge potential because we're already seeing these platforms being built for other industries. Why not DMOs? Why not convention bureaus, why not for various different event planners or event strategists who work in different parts of the industry?
We have spark that's looking at the planning elements, the strategy Elements. But what about Back of House and the actual production element? Is there an AI tool out there that could program your lighting for a huge opening sequence within 30 seconds?
Magdalina Atanassova: I don't know if you've seen this video, it circulated on social media, where a personal AI agent calls a venue to arrange for a wedding and the two AI agents discover their AI agents and they switch language to communicate quicker in a quicker manner and then find the best options.
Of course, they end up having to pass on details to a real human being so real humans can then continue the conversation. But I found that very interesting.
Rory G. Archibald: Yeah, I've seen that one. And I actually found it quite terrifying when they transferred into a different language, like, yes, we are going to be run by robots in the near future.
That's definitely going to happen.
It was fascinating. But what that did, that took the bride or groom or a family member folding up a venue to go through the very basic elements of availability, capacity, everything like that.
And they got to a stage where, where a lot of the stuff had been done already that a human didn't need to get involved in. And then you stepped in to then do the fine tuning, refinement, the personalization.
That was fascinating. And that, I mean, look at venue finding.
I think that's the bane of everyone's life, including the venues. So maybe that could be done like that. Just two AI bots chatting to each other and then it only gets passed over to a human when somebody's ready to talk more details.
I mean, I've done that in a hotel. I've answered that phone many, many years ago. And it's the most frustrating thing having to. This is back when faxes were still a thing.
Faxing over availability, emailing over availability, phoning availability, and then never hearing anything again. If that could then be dealt with somebody else or something else, that would have made my entry into this industry so much nice.
Magdalina Atanassova: I know. I remember studying how to draw the lighting, the park hands and how to fax them. It was part of my studies, so.
Rory G. Archibald: Oh, good. I don't feel so bad that you were also faxing, showing my age.
Magdalina Atanassova: We're there, same age.
So you mentioned upskilling and how instead looking in the public sector, in a sense that you already mentioned, it's part of your required training that you have to, you know, learn about what to input, what not to input,
and you have to, you know, be responsible of how you use AI. What else is there?
Rory G. Archibald: I was saying public sector, our trading is pretty much, this is what you do. This is what you don't do. And that's kind of where that training is currently got to at the moment.
So what I'd imagine training should be looking like in the near future,
first and foremost is ethical and responsible AI literacy is to understand the ethical implications of artificial intelligence on what the data that you're getting back and using artificial intelligence in a responsible manner.
I think it's going to be fundamental to any training course within artificial intelligence. Even if it's a closed system, there should still be ethical responsibilities there because that system has to to learn from somewhere and it will still be learning from the people with access.
And we cannot rely that everybody who has access to a system all think exactly the same way.
Real world case studies should be really critical to AI training. We cannot just assume that everybody is literate within technology,
acronyms, speech, even just the technology you're logging onto a computer. It's not everybody's 40. Using Excel is not my 40 programming. I have no idea how to program anything. So the reason real world examples gives people that real world view of how AI can help them do their job better,
make their life easier,
create creativity. I think that's terrible English, but make creativity better. I gave that example earlier about the session in San Diego where the session was all about real world examples.
And it just opened my eyes a little bit more back then two years ago about what the potential of that technology could be.
And I mentioned earlier as well, when we look at training for artificial intelligence, it's not just these are the buttons to click. This is the question to ask is bringing in the ethics and human rights element to it, the diversity, equity, inclusion.
Because again, just to re emphasize this, even though I'm repeating myself, is to acknowledge that there are biases built into all of these systems. There are voices that are not being inputted into these systems.
And so when we're looking for if you're going to try and get a case study for how can we make my event the most diverse and inclusive event possible, I guarantee you there's something missing from it and I guarantee you there'll be something wrong within that document that could be fundamental to your organization if you were to move forward with it.
So getting those different elements coming in to do training to understand holistically AI is going to be absolutely essential. And as a fun example about how it can go wrong when you don't take into account all of it, there was our destination, which I will not.
I can't actually remember where it was, which is probably for the best because it should remain anonymous. But we learned from our mistakes, so it's a good thing. A content creator put in give me the top 10 restaurants walking tour in this city.
And AI churned out this thing went up in the website immediately wasn't checked. They were advertising Food bank as the number one five location restaurant to visit. So people with a go who are struggling to buy their own food was advertise the place as a restaurant.
So AI didn't understand what a food bank was, but because it was a popular Internet search, assumed it was a popular restaurant. And so I was doing my little hand commas there because I'm forgetting this is podcast and that went onto the Internet without actual sense checking.
So this was on the news. It was very funny. People were laughing because of this mistake. But magnify that by something else and all of a sudden you are in a press nightmare, you're in a brand crisis.
Your event is being questioned on its ethics because of oversights, trusting something without taking into account various different concerning elements of artificial intelligence. So it's going to be a good thing.
But we need to treat it with respect, we need to treat it with caution until we understand it more fully and until we can be reassured that what the information we're getting to is ethical.
Ethical, it is responsible. But even then, everything needs to be checked.
Magdalina Atanassova: Certainly, if event planners in the public sector could take just one critical step today to ensure ethical, accessible and effective AI implementation, what should it be?
Rory G. Archibald: I'll give you two things. One is be careful what you're uploading.
Data is one of our closest assets for everybody. And you cannot treat other people's data. It has to be protected critically. The other thing is to check everything. Do not take verbatim what comes out of AI.
Check it, research it, compare it to your values, compare it to your organization's values,
even just simple spell checking.
I'm slightly bad at getting something from AI, putting it into Word, then reworking it. So always start out with what I've done. Then I ask AI to tidy up and then I'll tidy up further, but I keep on missing a Z where it should be an S in British English.
And that just gives me away. Every so often it's like, did you use AI to help you with this? I was like, how do you know? Because it's American English.
Ah, sorry.
Checking everything is so utterly critical because even a project SAB is doing today, we're coming out with fundamental errors because the data that we're collecting from is from 2023, not 2025.
It might sound impressive, it might sound like the references are there, but it was from two years ago and I have to then go back to do my own research, which, you know, you always double check everything anyway.
And it was like, oh, that's from 2023. That's why that didn't seem right. So, yeah, it's not perfect by any means.
Magdalina Atanassova: I don't know if you know this trick, and I'm just going to mention real quickly, there is a thing with AI that you can threaten it,
and I know it sounds a little psycho, but if you say, you know, give me the best possible answer to the extent that you have. Because if I give a wrong, wrong information to my boss, my boss will make me cry.
Actually, AI would give you more valid response if you input this at the end for some reason. I've tested it and it actually works. It kind of intriguing.
Rory G. Archibald: I wouldn't have to do that with my own team, see if that changes anything.
Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah, you can give it a try. It's really funny and I feel very bad for doing it, even though it's just AI, But I feel like, you know, I'm kind of threatening AI not to do a better job for me.
Rory G. Archibald: Now. You need to be very careful with that because what happens if robots do take over the world? Because they will come after you. I don't know if you do this, but soon I ask Siri for anything.
I always say thank you just in case.
Magdalina Atanassova: Many of us have that same strategy. Don't worry, saying please and thank you.
Rory G. Archibald: I'll keep my manners with AI just in case.
Magdalina Atanassova: Rory, was there anything we didn't mention we should before we wrap up?
Rory G. Archibald: I think it's just. Again, I'm repeating myself, but it's just to reemphasize.
Are we being transparent about how we're using AI as an industry? Are we being transplant with our partners, with our clients?
And are we treating their data with as much respect as you'd want your own data to be treated? I think those are just such key, key things. And I suppose there's also things.
When we talk about collecting data in public sector, the number one question is, are we collecting more data than we need? We only collect the bare minimum of data because data is precious.
And I would say it's the same thing when it comes to artificial intelligence. Are we uploading more information than we need should just. That's that air on the side of caution, at least for the time being.
Until there are legislations in place, we know who owns the platform. We know the political motivations behind them, transparency,
how we treat data, respecting data, and making sure that we're not collecting or uploading any more than what we need to.
Magdalina Atanassova: Very nice way to wrap up. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Rory G. Archibald: Absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.
Magdalina Atanassova: Remember to subscribe to the Convene Podcast on your favorite listening platform to stay updated with our latest episodes. We want to thank our sponsor, Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau. Visit discoverPHL.com to start planning your next life sciences meeting. For further industry insights from the Convene team, head over to PCMA.org/convene. My name is Maggie. Stay inspired. Keep inspiring. And until next time.