GORDEN PRETORIUS
RESPONSIBLE AI
Fair trade For tradespeople, ensuring automated pricing and matching algorithms remain fair and transparent is one of the essential things that Checkatrade has to take into account.“ We leverage AI a lot to try and understand the breakdown and the transparency of a job type, but we’ re not going to rely on that data exclusively,” Gorden says.“ We’ ve got a lot of data that we’ ve collected over a very long period of time that we use to enrich our own data models.”
Gorden explains that’ s where Checkatrade can validate the pricing and work out if it is accurate and fair. Gorden says:“ I think it’ s a case of not just relying on AI and LLMs that have been trained on specific things.” He highlights that Checkatrade inputs a lot of its own knowledge based on geography and specific types of categories, subcategories, as well as job descriptions and job types.“ In areas where we’ ve potentially got some gaps in those models, we’ ll call that a confidence score, which I think is, again, part of that transparency that we provide to consumers,” he says.
Essentially, it’ s taking what the LLMs provide out of the box and enriching it with the firm’ s own data to provide a reliable kind of cost guide for consumers that they can take advantage of and leverage.“ Where we spot discrepancies,” Gorden says.“ That’ s usually a point for us to question why the AI says it’ s costing this much versus our knowledge of that data. And then when we compare, there’ s usually some discrepancy that we can reconcile relatively quickly.”
GORDEN PRETORIUS
TITLE: CTO COMPANY: CHECKATRADE INDUSTRY: VERIFICATION LOCATION: BARCELONA, SPAIN
Gorden leads Checkatrade’ s technology strategy, working on bringing AI to the UK’ s biggest trade directory. He was previously CTO of Typeform.
150 October 2026