We are all learning about the impact that using AI is having and the challenges it brings. From understanding the wider impact on the environment to respecting creators’ rights, privacy and purpose. So how can we all benefit from using AI and how do we keep this use aligned with our core values and ethics?
Circle's team recently attended the Memberwise Digital Excellence (2025) conference in London with over 350 membership and association professionals. The discussions included the rapidly evolving landscape of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Here is some of the advice on how to approach AI from the sessions we went to.
- Start by creating an AI working group. Brainstorm ideas and start to understand the problems and possibilities.
- Membership organisations are starting to using AI. Focus in on a specific problem that you are trying to solve? Where are we spending too much time? Consider if AI can help.
- Use AI in ways that complement your human skills and support organisational culture.
- Think about where you are putting your data. Is it private?
The keynote was by Tim Elsom, Senior Executive Partner and AI Leader at IBM, and CEO of BidEdge AI. He helps organisations leverage artificial intelligence to drive operational excellence and he explained how steep the adoption curve is becoming. 'Things are moving very fast. Things have barely started, the curve up is steep. The amount of effort going into AI across the world is huge.. And it is scaling up.’ Here are some of his eye watering facts to help us understand the scale..
- There are currently 10,000 peer reviewed new papers on AI submitted every month.
- GPT‑4 was trained on the equivalent of 13 British Libraries in just 60 days.
- $75 billion invested in AI by Google, $80 billion from Microsoft, $65 billion from Meta, $100 billion from Amazon.
He proposed these questions that your board could answer before funding the next AI pilot:
Value creation – which member or beneficiary outcome improves when you use it?
New business models – could AI unlock services you cannot deliver manually?
Leadership and talent – who owns AI and who is upskilled?
Enterprise usage – is the solution scalable across functions?
Cross‑disciplinary collaboration – how will IT, data, comms and policy work together?
'Use it as your special sword.. What is your USP, what makes you special, how does AI allow us to play on that specialness.. What are we about as an organisation? Use it to up your game...'
His perspective was this:
‘AI will not replace humans, but humans with AI will replace humans without it.’
Paul Blundel from the Arts Marketing Association talked about mindful AI use and guarding against cognitive atrophy. Language models are just pattern machines, they flatten things out and can miss the detail. They are also trained on materials that may not be respresentative of your audiences so you should also consider checking for bias and diversity in your prompts.
Don't generate what you won't use, use efficient prompts, be intentional with what you are doing. And finally...
