Exploring the Coexistence of First-Hand and Second-Hand Data in AI
Hi. It seems my original post about first-hand and second-hand data has already disappeared into the 'older than 90 days' void, but wanted to revisit this issue, since my team is asking about it. I initially voiced my concerns about second-hand data potentially biasing AI-generated summaries and limiting visibility into its origins. Now, I’d like to explore how both first-hand and second-hand data could co-exist in the platform. We have two recent examples where access to both types of data is valuable, though they should not be treated equally in AI summaries:
We receive feedback from internal support roles who help employees use our tools. This feedback is useful but considered second-hand, whereas direct input from daily tool users should be prioritized.
We conduct interviews with internal stakeholders about customer needs. These insights are helpful but not equivalent to direct customer data.
We expect more such cases in the future. Ideally, we’d like to store all this data in Dovetail and have it visible to everyone, since second-hand insights are often valuable for early exploration. However, the two data sources should be clearly distinguished in AI summaries and analysis. I’ve added a field to flag second-hand data in notes, but this doesn’t fully address the issue. Could this theme be considered in Dovetail’s development roadmap?
