About 90% of companies still aren’t seeing any financial benefit from artificial intelligence (AI), according to Accenture’s UK and Ireland chief executive. Yet vast sums of money are being spent on its deployment across the workforce. Businesses are under pressure to start showing the impact of this investment. As early adopters of AI and machine learning, researchers are the ones who can make this happen.

With large language models (LLMs) now embedded in browsers and inboxes, more people have easy access to huge amounts of information. This does not make them researchers. While data democratisation is a good thing in principle, many will not have the same level of rigour and judgement as we researchers do when it comes to interpreting and evaluating LLM outputs.

Fundamentally, AI tools are only as powerful as the prompts guiding them. Fortunately for our sector, we’ve always been in the business of asking the right questions. We can use this expertise to help colleagues and clients avoid the pitfalls of poor-quality research, while demonstrating innovative and creative ways to get the very most out of the tech.   

Speaking the language of decision makers

There’s no doubt that digital transformation is putting pressure on our profession, as it reshapes roles and insights functions. This doesn’t mean our work is less important; in fact, evidence matters more now than ever. But it does mean we must evolve how we position and talk about our work – and ourselves. 

Vacancies for roles like prompt engineers are on the rise, and experienced researchers understand better than anyone that not all questions are created equal – and that prompts are only part of the equation. The real skill lies in understanding context and shaping the information, assumptions, guardrails and evaluation criteria to address a given challenge. 

Our sector has a distinctive role to play here, but to do so we need to broaden the labels we use to describe our contributions, telling a story that relates to the needs of our stakeholders, budget holders and clients. This is about clearly demonstrating the link between our skills and businesses’ changing needs, opening up new commercial opportunities, and breaking out of the pigeonhole some place us in.

For instance, we should connect our expertise around data assurance and quality more directly to business risk. Insights teams can help colleagues move from asking “what can this tool produce” to “what context matters here, what risks are we exposed to, and what decision will this research support?”. In this sense, the future opportunity for researchers is not simply to become better users of AI, but to become the people who make AI usable, reliable and ready to guide decisions.

To lead these conversations effectively, we must be fluent both in the language of technology but also finance and management.

Driving creativity, value and impact

Some of the most exciting new opportunities which AI presents for our sector are creative ones. It’s enabling insights teams to be more ambitious with research and to dig deeper into the most pressing questions our clients and our society are grappling with.

As well as adding value, showing colleagues and stakeholders how we’re using the technology to do things which were not previously possible will also help prove our pedigree as leaders in AI, and allow us to be bolder in how we speak about our impact.

This in turn will strengthen researchers’ case for owning AI frameworks, helping business leaders to make smarter investment choices, both in the tech and in using AI-driven productivity gains to reinvest in strengthening the depth and quality of the research being produced.

New tools, same foundations

In reality, the core skills required to thrive in this new world haven’t changed. Fundamental practices such as professional rigour, ethical data handling and the art of influencing stakeholders are as critical as ever.

Curiosity also remains a uniquely human trait, something that will become more important as we harness AI to answer questions that previously weren’t possible.

By focusing on continuously honing these skills but also how we talk about them, the sector can turn change into opportunity. 

Our Business of Evidence report showed that the professional research and evidence market already contributes almost £19bn to the UK economy, driven in part by its ability to adapt. We must continue to evolve how we think and talk about our profession and keep reminding businesses why they can depend on our knowledge and expertise as they themselves navigate change and uncertainty. 

Jane Frost CBE is chief executive at the Market Research Society

• The MRS AI-Powered Insights Conference takes place in London on Thursday 2nd July.