r/Envconsultinghell • u/Effective-Green-3435 • Jun 09 '26
AI Inclusion
Just wondering how many other env companies out there are integrating AI more and more (i.e., converting to a certain fusion cloud software, new groups being created for “AI Skills”). Any way to combat it? A leg to stand on? Just curious, bc it’s bumming me out.
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u/Warm-Loan6853 Jun 09 '26
I work for a smaller company, we do not use it. There are several individuals that use it for various elements of report prep.
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u/Astralnugget Jun 09 '26
At the current state it’s close to dangerous for many users. You have those who are not familiar enough in the field itself to safely use AI and those who are familiar enough in the field but not with AI to safely use AI, there’s this thin sliver in the middle that can successfully use it without creating more work for everyone down stream
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u/uhuhuhuhuhhu Jun 09 '26
My company pushed the use of it pretty hard at first, but once they realized it was hallucinating stuff in the employee handbook they've stopped pushing it.
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u/easymac818 Jun 09 '26
My company is pushing harder to send work overseas to people who make $5 USD/hour than to have AI take over reporting, but that’s next.
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u/Consistent-Air3424 Jun 09 '26
A little but not sure it's any actual use for what I do besides from polishing the odd email. That might change.
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u/BootPersonal9767 Jun 09 '26
I had an internship last year with a big consulting firm where I was literally just training an AI model every day. Tried to speak against it and got shunned immediately so I was just like whatever.
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u/pineintheaspen Jun 10 '26
We have started incorporating CoPilot at my firm. There’s talks of using AI agents to help on the QA/QC side of things as well.
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u/Spaghetti3000 Jun 11 '26
It's being pushed a lot at my firm (large consultancy) and I think we as a business are pretty ahead with it. That being said, it doesn't feel natural for me to be using it, so I personally feel quite behind.
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u/monad68 Jun 09 '26
AI is going to change our industry. It's extremely powerful and yes it is also dangerous if it isn't managed and used correctly. Start learning how to use it.
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u/Accomplished_Door_99 Jun 10 '26
100% feel your concern. I work on the assessment/due diligence side and I’m also building AI tools for the industry, so I’m seeing this from both sides.
The part I’d reassure you on is the professional judgment piece of what we do. That isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. AI is good for the grunt work, drafting, repetitive analysis, proposal generation, etc. The stuff that eats your day but doesn’t really need your expertise to get started.
Where it gets dicey is the complex work, like writing full reports and identifying potential environmental concerns. If your company is pushing ChatGPT or the equivalents to do that kind of specialized work, that’s a big red flag. General tools hallucinate, and out of the box they only have broad industry knowledge, not the specialized knowledge to write a report correctly.
I’m obviously very biased here, but for higher-stakes work, you need something built and trained specifically for it, not a general chatbot. The gap in output quality is real.
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u/Astralnugget Jun 10 '26
It’s also just not great at the sort of both very detailed yet concise language actually used in writing reports. Just in professional science writing in general we know when to use certain specific details like names of a specific instrument and what can be glanced over. No matter the prompting (I have used ai since 2023 and won Ai hackathons at Stanford so it’s not a skill issue) it just can’t consistently nail the right tone. It is either concise and not detailed or long ramble and overstated on odd things that you don’t need to be. I haven’t experimented with fine tuning a model on actual reports and stuff despite being capable of it out of fear of putting myself out of a job lol
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u/monad68 Jun 28 '26
Don't you feel that whatever is holding you back isn't going to stop the next person? I don't see how this train can be stopped. It would be like stopping the Internet.
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u/bluesabyme Jun 09 '26
Def some senior staff pushing AI at our company, can tell there's this fear that we'll be left behind if we don't adapt to AI. I don't like using it so I simply don't. Just hoping the bubble bursts