SPOTT pilots Mike Hudson Foundation’s AI tools Knowbot and Longseek
Enhancing website usability with Knowbot
SPOTT is to integrate Mike Hudson Foundation’s (MHF) website search tool, Knowbot, into its website. Knowbot solves the problem of users struggling to find information on large websites.
Annabelle Dodson, Sustainable Business Project Manager at ZSL, said “By helping users get the information they need, Knowbot will make SPOTT even more accessible. It will save our users’ time and improve how they engage with our data.”
Mirjam Hazenbosch, Sustainable Business Programme Manager at ZSL said “We love that users can just ask questions in plain language and get accurate answers based on our website. Users know they can trust Knowbot’s answers because it always provides citations”.
For example, financiers looking to prioritise engagement asks can use Knowbot to summarise key social risks identified based on a company’s ESG disclosure, or quickly compare companies on a specific indicator to assess how one company performs against its peers.
Improving ESG assessment efficiency with Longseek
In addition, we are currently exploring new ways to improve the efficiency of our SPOTT assessments using the advances of AI. SPOTT is testing MHF’s new experimental AI tool, Longseek, which is powered by a Large Language Model (LLM).
LLMs are a specialised type of AI trained on massive amounts of text data, enabling them to understand and generate responses in natural, human-like language with a high degree of accuracy. Longseek is being developed to help researchers analyse large, unstructured information sources.
Oliver Cupit, Sustainable Business & Finance Programme Manager at ZSL, said “The increased efficiency we hope to get from Longseek’s AI may enable us to gradually scale SPOTT in the future – whether that means covering more companies or exploring additional sectors.
“By using AI to further increase supply chain transparency for investors, buyers, banks and other stakeholders, we hope to incentivise more companies to implement corporate best practices and improve sustainability. We look forward to revealing more about this and the results in the near future.“
Beyond this, LLMs have a great variety of potential applications to assist professionals across various domains, from monitoring and analysing data from remote sensing or satellite imagery, to tracking market trends and emerging risks through news coverage and social media.
However, as a part of ZSL, a conservation charity, we recognise the environmental footprint of large AI models due to their high resource demands. We are also aware of concerns of automation and its impact on jobs. Any use of AI on SPOTT is designed to support, not replace, the skilled work of our team.
Human judgment and verification remain essential in our assessments, and our analysis will continue to rely on publicly available information and scientific data.
About the Mike Hudson Foundation
Mike Hudson Foundation is a nonprofit providing free use of AI tools and pro bono advice to research-oriented nonprofits.
Oliver added: “Mike has been a great supporter of ZSL for many years. It’s fantastic that he’s now turned his focus to AI and we’re delighted to be working with his foundation and grateful for his support.”
Mike Hudson said: “We’re incredibly pleased to be working with ZSL and the SPOTT team in particular. ZSL is a world-class conservation institution producing crucial information and research. SPOTT is doing remarkable work raising the bar on sustainability and we’re proud to support them.”
To find out more about Knowbot & Longseek contact MHF via www.mikehudsonfoundation.org
To find out more about ZSL’s SPOTT collaboration with Mike Hudson Foundation get in touch with ZSL’s Sustainable Business & Finance team.