AI enabled sustainability ratings product - ON-1139

Project type: Innovation
Desired discipline(s): Computer science, Mathematical Sciences, Business, Social Sciences & Humanities, Interactive arts and technology
Company: Sustainability Plus c/o Axel Industries Inc.
Project Length: 4 to 6 months
Preferred start date: As soon as possible.
Language requirement: Flexible
Location(s): Toronto, ON, Canada
No. of positions: 1
Desired education level: CollegeUndergraduate/BachelorMaster'sPhDPostdoctoral fellowRecent graduate
Open to applicants registered at an institution outside of Canada: No

About the company: 

Sustainability means something different to almost every company, investor and stakeholder. Many companies track specific arbitrary ESG, DEI and other data and report on them utilizing many of the ratings agencies’ frameworks. There is no standard. These ratings are important to regulators and investors, as well as to other stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers and partners. To investors, they matter in terms of investment decisions, cost of capital and valuation, and success on M&A.

Companies and investors have spent significant sums on data only to see a change in reporting requirements for performance in the EU, and a general change in attitudes around sustainability data reporting culminating in a lessening of the reporting requirements for many companies. Reports suggest large companies and investors spend an average of $500,000 on data annually and the downgrade in their reporting needs suggested a more cost-efficient, optimized approach is required. Smaller companies are frozen out as they cannot afford the data. Add this to the fact that the large agencies rely on self-reporting that investors do not trust and that large agencies do not use AI effectively creates a perfect storm.

Describe the project.: 

Sustainability Plus uses technology to enable company ‘Sustainability’ ratings through the use of publicly available data. The aim is to utilise AI, automation and machine learning as the key foundations to deliver the application on a consistent basis. The aim is to allow for quarterly updated reporting and in addition enable the model to evolve and pivot to meet business demands as required.
As the model evolves, it is anticipated that additional functionality will be added along with more sophisticated analysis.

Back End

• Adapt current data gathering and scoring methodology/execution which result in 66 prompts delivering scores in order to scale to further market sectors based upon consistent approach
• Work to define the correct prompt engineering applicable and consistent for all sectors.
• The product should be designed to use 3 interchangeable LLM’s
• Create average scores from the 3 LLM’s/Automation/ML
• Ensure protocols are in place to prevent hallucinations, outliers and other discrepancies
• The application should be designed to attain an accuracy of above 9
• Apply learnings from the initial MVP to alternative sectors.
• The application should be easily changed and able to ‘pivot’ to market demands
• Optimize storage of data for audit and reference purposes without hanging onto redundant data (Please recommend how much storage would be required and the best options for the requirement/costs.)

Front End

• The goal for the user experience is to allow a single company name type in and deliver the scores of a given company which should then be managed and updated on a quarterly basis (if the company has not yet been scored, this will be done “live" and then locked in).
• Improve website as appropriate
• Improve BI tool usage for product presentation to customers
• There should be an option for the user to compare say 3 companies or run a top 10/20 in that sector.
• Ease of use by the consumer should be a top priority
• The website/application needs to be simple in design but effective

Other Requirements

• The product should be fully automated with virtually no human intervention wherever possible
• Whilst the application will be able to measure both public and private companies, certain private companies may be lacking in the information available. In such cases we need to be able to flag this and provide a caveat/understanding to the customer.
• Have a framework to be able to provide value added services alongside subscriptions, including a product to enable subscribers to challenge their scores for a fee

Required expertise/skills: 

- Expertise in managing AI based product development and delivery
- Web interface experience
- Expertise with leading development tools such as python
- Database design and execution
- Storage and archive solutions