RESPONSIBLE AI
Sometimes called a black box, AI can be difficult to manage, explain and regulate. IBM highlights in a blog about AI transparency that a growing number of high-stakes industries, including finance, healthcare, human resources and law enforcement, rely on AI models for decision-making. As these systems become more embedded into everyday workflows, it’ s important that companies operating AI systems use them fairly and that a level of trust is established with the users.
Gorden Pretorius, Checkatrade’ s CTO, says responsible AI can be used and decisions can be made transparently. While born in South Africa, Gorden had an opportunity to come to the UK after university, since then has held a variety of key positions at Surgis, Moonpig, Just Eat and Typeform – and most recently Checkatrade.“ The opportunity just sounded incredible,” Gorden explains of his decision to join the firm as CTO.“ I’ ve got a soft spot for DIY and trade. And if anything, if I’ m not doing this, I’ m probably going to end up in trade, construction, plumbing, electrician or something like that.”
No flat fares This isn’ t an industry where AI is embedded with ease. Gorden explains the complexity outright:“ If I’ m going to do a taxi drive, it’ s very much there’ s one kind of input parameter, maybe two – it’ s the time of day that you’ re doing it, but also the distance travelled. So it’ s very easy to calculate what the pricing is going to be and you can give a quick approximation based on those input variables. If you think about physical work, anything from an electrician to a roofer to a plumber, the variability in what you’ re going to do is so vastly different.”
Gorden says that where transparency really helps and where AI is also really relevant“ is giving you a breakdown”. He explains:“ It’ s like if I were to ask ChatGPT, for example, if I had to ask any kind of LLM or AI-type system, how much does it cost to renovate a bathroom? It’ s not going to say £ 2,000( US $ 2,706.33). It’ s going to say that it depends on what you want to do.”
Explaining how Checkatrade approaches transparency, he says:“ There’ s about a hundred different things that you can use to get that price more accurate – and that’ s essentially what we lean on. We try and create enough transparency so you can see what makes up this cost and how we price things, but if there’ s certain things that can adjust the price, we just create as much transparency around it as we can.”
“ We make sure that there’ s a human in the loop at every single stage”
Gorden Pretorius CTO Checkatrade
148 October 2026