It's a great question. Within our office, we are trialling all different facets in which we can use AI ourselves, meaning even vetting the recommendations that we make based on the information available when it's publicly available, to assure ourselves that we're looking at the right things and essentially to help us create rough drafts of documents that are overseen by humans.
In the larger procurement span, there are certainly things that can be done, particularly on repetitive practices. For things like statements of work that are somewhat generic in nature, can an AI tool be used to generate a statement of work and make modifications with human oversight? I think the answer is yes, the tools currently exist to do that.
I wouldn't suggest there shouldn't be human oversight that is able to identify errors made using the tools, but at this stage there are certainly implications for AI.
Moving forward, I think there's even more hope in terms of.... If the AI is incorporated into all facets of procurement, it could even identify the likelihood of success for suppliers bidding on certain prices, scanning the total environment of that acquisition over the last several years. That data would be incredibly useful from an efficiency standpoint if you were a supplier trying to figure out whether it's a worthwhile exercise to spend your time and effort bidding on a process where your win percentage is 1%, as an example.