“Neon AI’s custom LLMs help us significantly streamline our legislative review and commenting process. The Neon AI assistant drafts our initial comment letters that capture our core positions on land use policy, allowing our team to focus on strategic refinement rather than starting from scratch.”
Tim Trohimovich, Director of Planning & Law at Futurewise
Member American Institute of Certified Planners
Futurewise is a Washington state nonprofit dedicated to advancing sustainable and equitable land use and transportation policies. Since 1990, they have worked to prevent urban sprawl while protecting natural resources through the implementation of Washington’s Growth Management Act.
As part of the planning process with Futurewise, the Neon AI team identified three areas in which a custom expert LLM could help Futurewise’s staff efficiently write better letters of recommendation to County Planning Department officials. The first was to draft consistent official letters commenting on draft legislation. The second was to add consistent citations to draft letters. The third area, one that Futurewise had not considered at all, drafting grant proposal letters.
“Having the Neon AI system accurately reference our established policy positions and preferred citations saves countless hours of manual research. Neon AI’s citation expert LLM ensures our advocacy work maintains its credibility and consistency.”
Tim Trohimovich, Director of Planning & Law at Futurewise
Member American Institute of Certified Planners
To build Futurewise’s custom LLM application, the Neon AI team utilized Futurewise’s large historical bank of comment letters. Futurewise opted to have the Neon AI team handle the data processing, which required custom programs to transform and optimize Futurewise comment letters and other pertinent data for use with the Neon AI BrainForge custom LLM training process. The Neon AI team trained proof-of-concept models based on small portions of the data, and then based on Futurewise’s feedback and revisions customized the process, scaled up to full Futurewise application LLMs.
Customizing an LLM for Futurewise which produces accurate citations from their bank of preferred citations took special consideration to overcome the issue of LLMs hallucinating references. The Neon AI team set up separate programs to extract citations from Futurewise’s library of letters, added specific references at their request, and through careful analysis and iterative builds achieved an LLM “citations expert” which provides citations with a high degree of accuracy.
“The Neon AI grant writing assistant’s capabilities opens up new possibilities we hadn’t considered. The system understands our mission and priorities, helping us expand our funding opportunities by producing quality initial drafts that align with our organization’s goals.”
Tim Trohimovich, Director of Planning & Law at Futurewise
Member American Institute of Certified Planners
Grant proposal writing was an interesting case as well, however Futurewise had only a small number of grant proposal examples to offer. Through fine-tuning the base Futurewise LLM which contains a great deal of Futurewise material, the Neon AI team was able to capitalize on the strength of the underlying model. With careful training of the LLM grant writing expert on Futurewise’s projects and priorities, the Neon AI team was able to produce high quality grant proposal output.
Finishing “polish” on these custom large language models was achieved by training them on what an “ideal” answer to a particular prompt should look like. In addition the Neon AI team added details on the Futurewise organization, enabling their customized LLMs to assist Futurewise in producing a greater number of comment letters, grant proposals and well supported correspondence by producing first drafts, with appropriate citations utilizing Futurewise’s library of publications and resources.
“Using the Neon AI assistant takes our organization to a new level of performance.”
Tim Trohimovich, Director of Planning & Law at Futurewise
Member American Institute of Certified Planners
The story doesn’t end here. Neon AI continues to provide support and customization, training new versions of the Futurewise custom LLMs on a regular basis to incorporate newly written comment letters, grant proposals, added citations, legislative changes and new resources, so that their models continue to improve over time.
Neon AI is a trailblazer in the field of conversational AI, offering proprietary Collaborative Conversational AI (CCAI) technology. This patented solution facilitates seamless collaboration between human experts and AI, enabling advanced problem-solving. Neon AI’s Brainforge custom Large Language Model (LLM) creation process allows clients to tailor generative AI models to their unique needs and applications. By combining these innovative technologies, Neon AI is redefining the way humans and AI work together to drive progress across various industries.
Futurewise works throughout Washington state to encourage healthy, equitable and opportunity-rich communities. and to protect our most valuable farmlands, forests, and water resources through wise land use policies and practices. Read more →