Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are becoming a mainstay in modern workplaces, delivering a wide range of benefits that drive efficiency and competitiveness. Whether you’ve already adopted these tools or you’re looking to harness them in future, it’s essential to be across best practices and establish guardrails so your team can use this innovative technology safely, ethically, and securely.
Today, we’ll be looking at how AI can benefit your business, the risks of using it without guardrails, key steps for safe use, and how our team can support your journey. First, let’s break down why these tools are worth leveraging.
How Can Your Business Use AI?
- Process and Analyse Information
AI can be harnessed to process data and highlight key trends and insights, ensuring you’re ready to make informed decisions that support your goals and growth.
- Boost Efficiency and Productivity
It can handle repetitive tasks, so your team can put their skills and talents to good use focusing on more important work.
- Simplify Content Generation
Generative AI can quickly create content based on prompts, from emails to summaries, descriptions, blogs, and even images or videos.
- Enhance Accuracy
AI tools operate with set standards and methods, which supports accuracy and eliminates human error. This could look like reducing typos and grammatical mistakes, or ensuring data is inputted correctly.
- Improve Customer Experiences
It can draw on data to personalise customer experiences or provide instant support through tools like chatbots, ensuring your customers feel seen and support
- Boost Capabilities
If you’re a small business, AI can fill gaps in your team’s skillset or take their efforts to the next level. An example of this could be improving your marketing or design efforts, while effectively taking these tasks off your plate.
- Support a Competitive Edge
With so many benefits incorporating AI into your business’ workflows is key to keep you ahead of competitors, supporting innovation and accelerating growth.
It’s clear AI can have a positive impact on how you do business, but now let’s take a moment to consider the risks involved when using this technology.
The Risks of Using AI Without Guardrails
- Data Security and Confidentiality
Uploading data into AI platforms can affect information security and confidentiality. This is an issue for generative AI tools, which use the data you input to continue learning and shape future output. This can also result in sensitive data being stored externally by AI platforms.
- Inaccuracies or Hallucinations
While AI can reduce human errors like typos and flawed data entry, it can lead to inaccurate or misleading results known as ‘hallucinations.’ This is mainly a risk when using generative AI, with errors caused by factors including a lack of context or being trained by biased or incomplete data.
- Knowledge Gaps or Misuse
A lack of knowledge around using AI can introduce new risks to your business. Staff could input confidential information into an AI system, ignore the need for critical thinking and fact checking, or rely on AI to make important decisions.
- Compliance and Legal Issues
If sensitive data isn’t handled in line with privacy laws or industry standards your business could fail to meet compliance. Another concern is intellectual property and copyright issues, which could lead to legal issues.
How to Use AI Safely: The First Steps
Now we’ve covered the essentials, here’s some initial steps to support the responsible use of AI in your business.
- Tool Vetting and Approval
Evaluate your options, and thoroughly assess AI tools to ensure they’re credible and align with your data, security, and ethical requirements. AI can drive growth and innovation, but only if it’s the right fit – so make this a priority.
- Create an AI Acceptable Use Policy
This policy creates guidelines that govern how AI can be used securely and ethically, reducing risks for your business and supporting compliance requirements.
- Data Handling Procedures
These procedures help you and your team to uphold relevant regulations and data security. This includes outlining factors like transparency (informing customers or clients about AI use), secure storage, encryption, the use of access controls, and deletion once data is no longer required.
- Training and Awareness
Teach your staff the basics, and make sure they stay up to date with best practices – including how sensitive data should be handled and the importance of critical thinking when using AI. In addition, this training can cover how this tool can be leveraged in the workplace, ensuring your team can make the most of it.
- Human Oversight
This should be a critical part of your team’s process. Ongoing monitoring allows AI results to be checked for mistakes or bias, establishing accountability and supporting accuracy. Our CEO Lyndon Beck reflects, “At best we see AI as a tireless, methodical intern with access to the internet, but prone to lapses in accuracy – you wouldn’t let the human version of that loose on your clients or your data, so don’t do that with AI either.”
How Perth Support Can Help
If you’re ready to safely leverage AI in your business, we’re here to help. Our friendly team of experts can:
- Work with you to identify the best tools
- Implement governance and policies
- Train your staff
- Support compliance
- Provide ongoing monitoring and support as tools evolve or your business’ needs change
If you’d like to learn more, reach out here for a chat and we can get started.
