Omni's AI Philosophy

At Omni, we view AI as a powerful tool that we leverage within our work to better achieve our purpose to accelerate positive social change toward a more equitable society.

We've updated our organizational AI philosophy with an express goal to lean into our human-centered ethos and our core values of Connection and Accountability. Our thinking, our judgment, and our relationships with the communities we serve will always remain at the center of the work.

Many conversations about AI in the workplace focus on guardrails, oversight, and "keeping a human in the loop." It's meant to sound responsible, but the framing treats AI as the core process with the human as an afterthought. After several years of iteration working deeply with AI and building structures to support responsible use, our vision is that AI operates inside a fundamentally human loop.

What follows is the philosophy we landed on: five core principles that guide how we engage with AI internally, all rooted in the same values that will always guide our work.

Our Five Principles

1. AI is here, and we will not be left behind.

Choosing not to engage with AI, or imposing excessive restrictions, is not neutral. It risks our business, staff, and clients falling behind. Our sector is advancing robust AI efforts; staying relevant requires we remain current. We owe our clients and their communities the best tools to deliver high-quality work efficiently, responsibly, and to shape how these tools best serve community needs.

Omni will not adopt AI uncritically. We will engage actively and stay informed at every step. To remain effective for clients, communities, and colleagues, we must use these tools responsibly and effectively.

2. Our purpose is better work, not just faster work.

Our AI adoption rests on one guiding question: “Does this make our work better?”

To test quickly, ask if you use AI in the next hour, how will you add value compared with not using it? What will you deliver at higher quality or with greater efficiency?

We evaluate tools and approaches by these questions, not by speed alone.

So what does better look like? Three questions turn the guiding question into a usable test:

• Leverage. Did AI multiply what you could do? We are looking for uses that result in faster and better work than your unaided version, not faster alone.
• Continuity. Does the output draw on Omni's accumulated assets: our templates, our standards, our voice, our past work? This is a continuum, not a checkbox: the more of Omni's knowledge an AI use case carries forward, the more valuable it tends to be. Such uses are also more distinctive: anyone with an internet connection can access the same general-purpose AI, but only Omni can access tools that carry Omni's standards, templates, and past performance. Generic output that could have come from any chat window scores low here even when it is fast.
• Legacy. Does the use leave the work stronger for the next person: reproducible, on-brand, findable?

Speed can be a byproduct of using AI well. But it is not the standard by which we evaluate a tool or a practice. We evaluate based on whether AI helps us produce higher-quality research, sharper analysis, more accessible deliverables, and greater impact for the communities we serve. If a tool makes us faster but compromises quality, that is not a compelling case.

3. AI will not replace Omni jobs. It will change them.

AI is already shifting what our work looks like. Routine, high-volume, or rote tasks are increasingly something AI can support. We hope this frees our team for the work that requires human expertise: interpretation, judgment, relationship, and meaning-making. Our team's expertise, values, and judgment are what distinguish Omni and AI should augment those things, not replace them.

It is important to also note that work does not count for less because it was AI-assisted. Using these AI tools skillfully by knowing what to delegate, what to verify, and what only you can contribute, is itself a professional competency that Omni values.

4. Our work will remain human-centered.

We believe that the common framing around AI tends to get it backward. The default language in the industry is "keeping a human in the loop," as if the AI process is the center and the human is an add-on oversight mechanism. We reject that framing.

At Omni, the loop is fundamentally human. Our work, our thinking, and our processes are human-centered by design, and any technology, including AI, operates within that loop, not the other way around.

We describe this as having technology in the loop: AI is a powerful tool (just like Excel or R or Dedoose) that lives inside a fundamentally human process.

This also shapes how we think about Omni's competitive position going forward. As AI becomes more capable at analytical and technical tasks, the work that differentiates us is the work only humans can do: higher-order thinking and synthesis, professional judgment, the work of bringing people and communities together, facilitating consensus, and holding the ethical dimensions of complex questions. We are not threatened by AI's growing capabilities. We are leaning into the human work that AI cannot do.

5. We will manage this change by adhering to our core values.

Our core values (Agility, Inquiry, Connection, and Accountability) are the right anchors for navigating this moment. Each of them takes on a specific meaning in the context of AI:

Agility includes adapting to rapid societal change, at a pace that requires leaning into this core value more than ever before. It means learning, testing, deploying, and adapting to AI tools faster than we ever have. The pace of change demands an agility mindset.

Inquiry means staying genuinely curious about how AI can advance our mission: asking hard questions about where it helps, where it falls short, and how we remain in the decision-seat as humans.

Connection means centering humanity over the machine. It means deciding to bring people together rather than simply delivering what the algorithm produced. It means our clients and communities remain the point.

Accountability means holding ourselves to our ethical and research standards even as the tools change. It means doing what is right for clients and communities, regardless of what AI makes easy. Rather than abandoning rigorous approaches because certain tasks are faster or easier with AI, we will use AI to make Omni's work more rigorous, not less.